________________________________________________________________________________ Wired News Pirates Invade Book Publishing by M.J. Rose 3:00 a.m. Sep. 22, 2000 PDT Where did the free books go? A website that offered links to free downloads of entire texts of copyrighted books by famous authors, as cited in a Wired News article, has been altered at least twice. At last check, all that was found at the former #Bookwarez homepage was a directory index. And that replaced a page that dsplayed a text message denying such a page, as described in the article, ever existed. But for at least a month pirated copies of dozens of best- selling novels by authors such as Stephen King and J.K. Rowling were available for free download via links from the site. Piracy of copyrighted material has been a part of the Internet scene for some time. The music file-trading application Napster is perhaps the most prominent case making its way through the court system. "First of all, there is no site called "#bookwarez"...," it read on the site Friday morning. "... As the maintainer of this homepage, you would think that I would have known about a message board! The members of #bookwarez are not affiliated with this message board, and were not aware of it until this article." Sometime between 9 a.m and 11 a.m. (PDT), the site changed and an index was displayed where the denials once were. Before publishing, Wired News verified the existence of the cited pages and has archived the cited pages. An email request for an interview was sent to the address listed on the page two days before publication. By following links listed on #bookwarez's message board, it was possible to download the complete e-book version of Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes. Other links offered Rowling's Harry Potter books, King's The Green Mile and The Stand, Tom Clancy's Red Storm Rising, Carl Sagan's Contact and dozens more. Simon & Schuster, which publishes McCourt and King, is aware of the site and is taking the problem very seriously, said company spokesman Adam Rothberg. While illegal copies of books have been surfacing online for quite some time, an industry source who requested anonymity said that #Bookwarez is the largest site discovered to date. Judy Corman, spokeswoman for Rowling's publisher, Scholastic, said that pirated copies have appeared online before. But she said Scholastic was unaware of the current situation and would begin an investigation. "Our lawyers are all over it when illegal copies appear. We are really diligent," Corman said. Penguin Putnam, Clancy's publisher, was not aware of #Bookwarez, but will begin investigating "this afternoon," a company spokesman said. "And if we discover a copyright violation we will take the appropriate legal action." One difficulty in taking legal action is that sites such as #Bookwarez are moving targets. "They use chat venues, which make tracking difficult because there are no permanent records," said Internet consultant R.H. Dale. "The sites simply operate until they get caught, close down, and reappear under a new name within 24 hours. Within minutes of reopening, all chat subscribers are emailed the new address." Piracy won't be stopped, either by digital rights management or by lawsuits, according to a new report that Forrester Research issued Tuesday. The report suggests that as piracy increases and authors break away from publishers to go independent, book publishers will lose $1.5 billion by 2005. "Consumers have spoken; they demand access to content by any means necessary," said Eric Scheirer, an analyst at Forrester. If there's any consolation for book publishers, access to this particular hub, while not restricted, requires a fairly sophisticated computer user to figure out how to get the books, Simon & Schuster's Rothberg said. Allan Adler, vice president for legal and government affairs for the Association of American Publishers, said that it is hard to put a dollar amount on the possible loss from piracy since the industry can't yet estimated what its digital market will be. "But it is certainly a problem because as fast as new encryption software for e-books is created, someone finds a way to break it," he said. Even the newest secure format doesn't remain a secret for very long. "We found a pirated Harry Potter book available online in the Microsoft Reader format within a few days of the format being released," Adler said. And print books are even simpler to put online, given that they are mostly text and that scanning equipment is relatively inexpensive. Adler warned that if copyrights continue to be treated in this fashion, the possibility exists that the publishing industry will be forced to stop making content available online altogether. The industry, he said, has not had sufficient time to create business models to counter the rapidly developing technology that allows people to illegally post material and for the public to access it. New models, such as offering e-books for such a low price that no one will feel the need to steal them, are being assessed. "But even Stephen King has found that a dollar is too much for some people," Adler said, referring to the fact that bootlegged copies of The Plant have been discovered online. King has offered his self-published book to readers for $1 a chapter. In conjunction with Microsoft, the AAP has set up an initiative to deal with online piracy that focuses on coming up with better encryption methods, creating more realistic ways to enforce copyright laws, and educating the public about the problem. In addition, other programs are being implemented to identify copyright violations, pursue violators and work with law enforcement agencies. These efforts focus on monitoring and responding to the unauthorized reproduction and distribution of books, as well as the unauthorized distribution of information or programs that help to break security technologies. An Internet monitoring program includes an automated, intelligent search tool that looks for pirated e-book content 24 hours a day, seven days a week. "No matter what," said Adler, "we are facing a serious problem because once you put digital files online, there is no foolproof way to protect them." As one author whose work has been pirated said, "It is interesting that people love authors so much they want to steal from them." http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,38945,00.html ________________________________________________________________________________ no copyright 2000 rolux.org - no commercial use without permission. is a moderated mailing list for the advancement of minor criticism. post to the list: mailto:inbox@rolux.org. more information: mailto:minordomo@rolux.org, no subject line, message body: info rolux. further questions: mailto:rolux-owner@rolux.org. home: http://rolux.org/lists - archive: http://rolux.org/archive