Yet another industry awakens and begins to see the Internet as the Harbinger of All Evil and Bane of Corporate Profits Worldwide. I shudder to think who's next.
(Frankly I find reading a few pages of a PDF file onscreen annoying enough.) -rick Infowarrior.org Students illegally download textbooks Tech-savvy generation finds way to cut costs of higher education, raising ire of publishers http://www.canada.com/fortstjohn/story.html?id=1fe3d6e7-0803-4972-8b47-81d5 e149ce36 Isabel Teotonio The Ottawa Citizen September 18, 2004 CREDIT: Jean Levac, The Ottawa Citizen Anatoliy Boyko, left, and Dave Pascoe Deslauriers are University of Ottawa computer science students who say book downloading isn't yet widespread at their school and may be more trouble than it's worth. A growing number of students are skirting the high cost of textbooks by illegally downloading pirated copies from the web, according to publishers who want stiffer copyright laws to curb a practice some say is pilfering revenues. While the volume of books being swapped in chat rooms and on peer-to-peer networks such as Kazaa doesn't compare with the amount of music and movies being trafficked, it is nonetheless a growing problem, says Colleen O'Neill of the Canadian Publishers Council. "The worry is that it's going to grow because computers aren't something only a few people have," she says. "As an industry, we need to look into this because, similar to what's happening in the music industry, it's beyond our control." While there's been a chorus of criticism about music being downloaded, the unauthorized trafficking of pirated textbooks has gone virtually unchecked, says researcher David Price of Envisional, an online monitoring company. This British-based company first alerted many North American publishers to the practice when it released a 2001 report listing 17,000 copyrighted books, mostly fiction, available on the web. Today, that number is between 25,000 and 30,000, says Mr. Price. Although most are science fiction and fantasy books -- the stuff "young, geeky males" are into -- a significant portion are academic texts, particularly in disciplines where students are more tech-savvy, such as mathematics, engineering and computer science. "Students are certainly doing it, but nobody seems to have recognized the problem," says Mr. Price. "We do see it increasing over time -- both with the range of books and the number of people doing it. Technology is going to get better and better and this will just become a growing problem." Book industry critics say the charges are exaggerated. Instead, they suggest, publishers are attempting to justify escalating book prices and trying to clamp down on the distribution of information. Unlike music, where you'll likely find every track released in the past five years, it's hit or miss when it comes to finding digitized books. But the general rule is this: The more popular a book is offline, the more likely it is to be online. Pirated texts can be found on peer-to-peer networks (commonly known as P2P), such as eDonkey, WinMX, Gnutella and Freenet. P2P is a type of transient Internet network that allows users with the same networking program to connect with each other and directly access files such as music, movies, games or books from one another's hard drives. But the main hub of activity is hidden away in Internet relay chat channels, also known as the cyber residence of pirates. Internet relay chat, or IRC, is a system for chatting that involves rules, conventions and client/server software. There are sites on the Web that provide servers to download an IRC client to your PC. It's a virtual meeting place where people start chat groups, called a channels, or join existing ones. If you join a channel for books, such as "#Bookz," you can search through people's digital catalogues, where you're bound to find pirated titles by some of the largest publishers in the textbook business: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, Nelson Thomson Learning, Pearson Education Canada and John Wiley and Sons Canada. Unlike music, which can be easily copied, the effort and determination involved in pirating a textbook is extensive. After snapping the spine off a book, each page must be scanned, converted to text and proof-read before being uploaded. There have also been instances of copy-protected e-books being duplicated, but given the technological skill involved, it's rare. But Anatoliy Boyko, president of the University of Ottawa's computer science student association has never heard of students doing it. "If this were going on I'm pretty sure I'd know about it," said the fourth-year student. "Sure you can download text, but reading it onscreen hurts the eyes and printing out a whole textbook is really expensive." Besides, he said, you're bound to waste time surfing for a particular book and edition only to find it doesn't exist. But Mr. Price says it's really "pretty easy," adding there's usually someone in cyberspace willing to help track down the text. "It's like friends who want to share their books with you." he says. "Most are doing it because it's a good way of sharing and obtaining the books they need. I don't think people are saying, 'I've been overcharged for this (book) so I'm going to rip it and share it.' It's more likely that they're just thinking there might well be others in the same boat.... Someone's thinking, 'I'll scan this book, which cost $40, and someone else who's paid a similar amount for a textbook will do it too. I do my two or three hours of scanning but I end up with 10 or 20 textbooks down the line.'" In fact the process is so easy, says Petra Cooper of McGraw-Hill Ryerson, that even the children of company employees who work there are downloading books. The practice may be growing in part because people assume it's legal, she says. After all, a Federal Court of Canada judge ruled in March that downloading music wasn't breaking the law. That's because when it comes to music, a private copying regime exists so that a royalty fee for the music industry is factored into the price of blank CDs. But no similar structure exists for books, meaning creators are deprived of royalties. While researchers have come up with a ballpark figure for the number of pirated books online, it's difficult to determine the number of downloaders. According to a CPC telephone survey done in the spring of 1,300 undergraduate students across Canada, 30 per cent said they had used electronic books and one-fifth said they had shared them via P2P networks. Given that students today came of age in the era of Napster, the pioneering file-sharing network, it's surprising more aren't doing it, says Ms. O'Neill. After all, they're cyber-savvy and technologically equipped. An even tougher figure to pinpoint is the amount of money being lost by an industry that sells about $250 million worth of textbooks in Canada each year. Ms. Cooper estimates the more popular pirated titles can suffer sales losses between 10 and 30 per cent. On occasions when the publisher has hired cyber surveillance companies to identify the digitized book titles being swapped and how often it appeared on file-sharing networks, the results often coincided with dropped sales or increased returns. Two years ago, a second-year engineering book by McGraw-Hill Ryerson called White, Fluid Mechanics was distributed on Kazaa and other P2P networks. Sales dropped by 30 per cent, despite no comparable decrease in enrolment. Following this discovery, the company alerted other publishers who also noted decreased sales. Revenues are also affected by plunderous entrepreneurs downloading texts onto CDs and selling them to students on campuses for a fraction of the price, say publishers. Some are brazen enough to sell their loot openly, as was the case earlier this year when an Ottawa man in his 20s was found auctioning hundreds of pirated titles on eBay. He had copied exam preparation materials, study guides and software manuals onto CDs. It's estimated he took in about $20,000 in four months for pirated works with an estimated retail value in excess of $300,000. Access Copyright, the Canadian copyright licensing agency, sued him and he was ordered last month by a federal court to pay $100,000 in damages. Ironically, when students try to save money by downloading or buying pirated texts, they end up jacking the prices for those buying books legally because the cost of production, research and development ends up being spread over fewer sales, says Roanie Levy of Access Copyright. But Jesse Greener of the Canadian Federation of Students, suspects the industry is exaggerating the practice to "deflect the issue of rising costs." Rather than take responsibility for the rising cost of textbooks, which increases between three and five per cent each year, the industry is shifting blame onto students, he says. "There's no doubt that many things get swapped on Kazaa but it doesn't sound to me like it's a very wide practice." Computer science student David Pascoe Deslauriers agrees. "Book piracy is real, however the titles that are actually pirated are interest books.... If anything it's just an excuse (for publishers) to raise prices," says the third-year U of O student. Curious about whether he could find his texts online, he launched into cyberspace and searched through various P2P networks and IRC channels but came up empty-handed. He found related books, but they were at least five years old or already available for free on the Web. "Hardly a vicious piracy ring," he notes. After inquiring with cyber-savvy peers, he's pretty sure that text books aren't being pirated for use in class. "Everyone I've spoken with has said they haven't even heard of anyone doing this," he said. "If texts books could be (easily) pirated, it wouldn't be on a small scale, it would be huge." Even in the United States, where the practice of book piracy is said to be more rampant, the industry doesn't have sufficient data on the size and scope of the problem, according to the Association of American Publishers . "We're told by publishers they don't perceive an industrywide impact, only a title-specific impact," said Edward McCoyd, the association's director of digital policy. "The electronic book industry is growing and as technologies improve to make the book-reading experience more palatable, we may see a comparable rise in the amount of online book piracy, so it's something we have to watch closely." But in Canada, some complain it's futile to track pirated titles, and say the Copyright Act is toothless in clamping down on copyright infringements. Although pirating a text is illegal, publishers say they have no remedy to go after those who do it. "Copyright reform is way behind and hasn't acknowledged the digital world," says Ms. Cooper. "It makes Canada the wild west of pirating copyrighted works because no one has any clear sense of what recourses they should take." Canada is currently in the process of considering reforms to the act to ensure it remains relevant in a changing digital environment. The House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage has been reviewing the copyright law, in light of technological developments and international treaties In the U.S., the Digital Millennium Copyright Act gives publishers the power to request that pirated material be removed or risk having access disabled by the pirate's Internet Service Provider. Unlike the U.S. recording industry, which has sued thousands since launching an assault against illegal file-sharers last year, U.S. publishers show no interest in going after student pirates. "They really don't want to get to that point with their customers," said Mr. McCoyd, adding notice and takedown procedures have proven effective. Canadian publishers show no interest in prosecuting students, they simply want legislation that will stem the tide of purloined textbooks and ensure creators are properly compensated. Publishers warn that students' actions could literally stop the presses. "It drives the publisher out of business and drives good Canadian authors from writing books in Canada," says Ms. O'Neill. It's a sentiment echoed by Ms. Cooper: "This isn't about nameless, faceless, corporate greed.... We know how important cultural industries are to Canada and to have the populace screw it up doesn't make much sense." But even academics, making up the majority of textbook authors, oppose the industry's attempt to crack down on the exchange of information online. "Publishers like to talk about theft and how people are losing money, while professors take a more nuanced view," says Paul Jones of the Canadian Association of University Teachers, which represents 36,000 teachers, librarians and researchers. While professors are opposed to the outright theft of copyright material, "there's enormous sympathy for both students and other scholars to have access to this material. And, they're concerned with the way copyright law is developing and the behaviour of publishers that are pricing that material out of the reach of a lot of people." He warns that in an industry where profits are the first order of business, issues of education and access are secondary. "They're pricing themselves out of the market and they're not adapting to new technology." � The Ottawa Citizen 2004 -- You are a subscribed member of the infowarrior list. Visit www.infowarrior.org for list information or to unsubscribe. This message may be redistributed freely in its entirety. Any and all copyrights appearing in list messages are maintained by their respective owners.
