Getting the Government (and Google) Involved

Article: Ebook Piracy is out of Control and the Authors Guild is Mad

Source: Good eReader

Date Published: June 10th 2020

Author: Michael Kozlowski

While some people compare the internet to the Wild West, it is generally agreed that it is unfair that authors should shoulder the responsibility of tracking down and disciplining those who pirate their work. In the “real world” it seems ludicrous—is the author expected to stand guard of their books at their local bookstore and report any attempted thievery? Of course not; instead, we in a society that has safeguards in place and authorities who can control any threat to someone’s livelihood. In the case of e-book pirating, many people believe that the government is failing to properly enforce the laws in place that are meant to protect creators. The Authors Guild has called out the ineffectiveness of the government’s current policies, saying “the notice-and-take-down system is not working—at least not for authors, other individual creators, and small creative businesses.” The Authors Guild is a collection of a whopping 10,000 professional writers, and all of them have been affected by e-book piracy in one way or another. It is jarring to imagine the amount of money and creative energy has been lost to virtual pirates. 

It was somewhat shocking to learn that for some people downloading pirated e-books, it is not a matter of trying to save a few bucks but rather an issue of convenience. Kozlowski’s article tells us that “the vast majority of illegal book downloads occur because they are so easy to find and acquire, and that the users who acquire ebooks illegally would have acquired the book legally…if illegal ebooks were more than a few clicks away.” Another way of putting it: people tend to be more lazy than cheap. This fact is slightly encouraging since it implies that most people do not pirate books with malice, but are rather just misinformed or perhaps a bit ignorant. But intentions aside, the practice of pirating still hurts authors in a major way, with the article reported dwindling salaries for professional writers over the years. I had known that being a writer isn’t the career to make you rich (not including the J.K. Rowling’s and Dan Brown’s), though I had always wondered why. I figured it perhaps had something to do with authors making bad deals with their publishers and not getting any royalties, or maybe their books just suffer in an overly competitive market. While these may be factors, it seems that the dilemma of online pirating contributes to a massive loss of wealth.

Another platform being called out alongside the government is Google, as the Authors Guild claims the search engines lack of pirate policing isn’t their only problem. Douglas Preston, president of the Authors Guild, accused Google of actually making pirating sites easier for searchers to find, often putting links to illegal shopping websites in their Google Shopping tab mixed in with legitimate vendors. This makes even well-intentioned buyers subject to pirating websites. Preston offered a simple solution to this: for Google to only allow seller links from authorized ebook vendors that work with the publishers. Based on my own experience, a quick search of “e-book downloads” will yield many results of shady websites, with the legitimate sites only showing up first due to a paid advertisement (indicated by the minuscule word “AD” listed under the link). This alone shows the efforts publishers and distributors are putting into pushing their legitimate sites in an attempt to drown out the pirates. As the internet evolves and becomes more advanced, so do e-book pirates. It has never been easier to find a free version of a book online as illegal sites become more sophisticated, and with little to no help from the government and Google, the future does not look bright for book sales (and authors wallets).