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ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING BUSINESS REPORT By Name Course Instructor Institution City/State Date Table of Contents ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING BUSINESS REPORT1 Exploration of the Piracy and Copyright Issues Associated With E-Publishing Error: Reference source not found Exploration of the Piracy and Copyright Issues Associated With E-Publishing Abstract Basically, the e-publishing industry has developed because of successful use of digital devices, and publishing of e-books has been beneficial to the publishers. Basically, e-publishing results in lower cost of production, low costs of inventory storage, and importantly, creates a platform for developing a stronger customer base at international level. Undoubtedly, publishing e-books is not a novel concept, and also electronic readers have been existent since 1999 when Franklin e-Bookman was introduced. The ubiquitous diffusion of e-reading awareness, lifestyle changes that are technologically impacted, improved broadband connectivity as well as high utilisation of e-books by higher institutions of learning are generating a necessity for digital books, magazines, as well as journals. Thanks to diverse opportunities presented by e-publishing, majority of authors, organizations, together with traditional publishers are also presently in the e-book business.  Every technological solution comes with both legal and business responsibilities, and this is the case with e-publishing.  In this case, e-book publishers have to understand a number of copyright and piracy issues associated with things like tables, cover artwork, charts and maps, as well as works’ excerpts that will be included in the e-book. Digital technologies’ emergence provided an irresistible channel for people to manipulate and copy other people’s works. This has in consequence led to multitude of issues attributed to copyright regimes. Evidently, digital publishing has turn out to be very prevalent, but piracy and copyright issues facing the industry has and continues to hinder progressive growth. Therefore, the report explores the piracy and copyright issues related to e-publishing. Introduction As defined by Shukla et al. (2011, p.2), e-publishing is a type of publishing wherein magazines, journals and books are being published online making printed journals unsuitable format for spreading contemporary research. In a number of fields like astronomy as well partly in physics, the journal role in broadcasting the most recent research has been substituted by preprint repositories. Still, printed scholarly works play a crucial part in generating scientific credit as well as in quality control. In a number of cases, the e-materials found in the preprint repositories are ultimately published in the peer-reviewed Journal. As evidenced in Shukla et al. (2011, p.2) study, there is statistical proof that e-publishing offers a broader dissemination and e-publishers can offer fast satisfaction for readers anywhere and anytime. As the creative works’ legal distribution has become easier, so has the unlawful dissemination of such works. Therefore, the issue of ideal strategy for intellectual property affects both the authors and online libraries. Electronic piracy is a growing international issue, and is largely affecting e-publishing. With the developing e-book standards as well as the increasing iPads popularity, piracy on eBook is expected to increase drastically. Therefore, e-publishers are experiencing a growth in piracy in addition to the challenges of economic instability, increasing e-retailers power and consolidation, as well as worry about copyright protection. Increasing in the number of internet users and the increased desire for e-learning, has promoted e-piracy on e-published content. Therefore, copyright and piracy issues are some of the key issue affecting e-publishing, and so this report will focus on them. E-publishing in Contemporary Setting Scholarly authors foray into e-publishing has been both boldly extravagant as well as cautious , with half being in the side of deep-rooted protocols and norms and the other half in the new, exhilarating world of new that came into existence after the surfacing of the Internet, especially the Web. When expressing ones thoughts, people do not only dare to dream, but they make the dreams become real, by creating dynamic expressions of knowledge through publishing (Henry, 2003). To comprehend where e-publishing is heading, scholars must not just take into account the current setting defining the roles of publishers, authors, users as well as third-party organizations in the process of publication, but also take into account the potentials of what the new technologies can achieve that promote exchange of information and knowledge in a unique manner. Comprehending such potentials can help in enlightening the intricacies that stakeholders are facing during the transition from traditional print publishing to novel paradigms of e-publishing. According to Henry (2003), Internet emergence, particularly the Web as a substitute channel for knowledge dissemination challenges the connections, which subsisted in the past between publishers and authors. Publishers, who were previously considered as knowledge brokers, used to materials to authors that they wanted to be published. Traditional publishing process was exceedingly long and mostly resulted in late new findings publication; hence, compromised the rapid dissemination of knowledge. However, this was solved when e-publishing emerged, but in consequence the information integrity was compromised (Henry, 2003). Thanks to the Web, authors can immediately and easily publish their works, and the extensive diffusion provided by the Internet has increased criticism to various published works. But the legitimacy of general audience and third party institutions that are not associated with peer review community is still lacking. Copyright Issues Copyright has for decades been a challenging issue to the publication world, and given that the law has conferred the published work ownership to its author, the inalienable rights accompanying such laws has been challenging in the world of e-publishing. As mentioned by Henry (2003), what ownership constitutes in the present digital era is still not clear. E-publishing stakeholders, including publishers and authors are worried about the many licensing as well as distributions limitations that copyright laws impose. As mentioned by Henry (2003), copyright law and internet are akin to water and oil, and so copyright law is less significant in the Web. The easiness with which works by different authors can be placed in Internet as well as share knowledge extensively severely clashes with the privileges proclaimed by the e-publishers. Broad diffusion of information is considered as the key threat to the world of publishing since it indicates that remunerative compensation for works accessible in every corner of the world cannot be controlled by publishers. Actually, when photocopying emerged, publishers tried to control content dissemination to no success. Since majority of information has been digitalised, it has become easier to share. Therefore, to maintain control, content ownership as well as licensing by publishers is growing. This has also affected the authors retaining their works’ copyright, given that they are currently facing a world fearing to share the author's knowledge due to the unceasing lawsuits threat for copyright infringement. In spite of legislation such as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that illegalises content created to escape copyright laws, scores of publishers lacked knowledge on how to protect copyrighted e-books. Simultaneously, publishers not ready to publish e-books that are copyrighted are barring other publishing companies from providing those books in electronic versions. In 2000, a number of authors including Robert Parker and Kurt Vonnegut contracted Rosetta Books to publish some of their works in digital format. In consequence, Rosetta Books initiated an e-book business, offering number of books in digital format. As a result, a copyright infringement complaint was filed by Rosetta Books accusing Rosetta Books for violating copyright law and interfering with the contracts, which Random House had with the authors (Epstein et al., 2006, p.505). Even though the two reached an out-of-court resolution, it indicates that copyright is a key issue facing e-publishing. From the above case, it is evident that copyright is the most valuable assets of the publishers. After all, it is the copyright law, which offers the basis that allows control of content by publishers, an consequently, enable them to profit through subsidiary rights licensing, like foreign translation, serial, and adaptation, selling books, as well as merchandising. Therefore, the main legal issue facing publishers is how to avoid violating copyrights and how to benefit from these copyrights. The copyright concept in authored works is experiencing unmatched challenges in the current information age. Whereas copyright law has in the past been modified to meet the shifting technological demand, Cantatore (2013, p.98) posits that authors in the contemporary society can no more depend on out-dated anticipations of ‘reward’ as well as ‘copyright protection’ for their . Therefore, shifting aspect of copyright needs a review, especially on the current copyright theories and norms, as well as a determined effort by writers of published work to acclimatise to the shifting publishing setting and emphasis their attention on developing issues. Although published work copyright was formerly pertinent to the word of printing, and controlled in the virtual restrictions of Australian copyright law, Cantatore (2013, p.99) assert that electronic publishing has prolonged the copyright precincts into an international territory, with progressively more multifaceted licensing agreements managing its application. Such developments according to Cantatore (2013, p.99) have made publishing alternatives to become successful, but in consequence, have created novel problems for the authors. Digital copyright protection has turned out to be a noteworthy problem, as has the capacity to adjust to e-publishing. Essentially, the existing tension between the authors’ rights and the public benefit has been helpful in amending the copyright law, and this has been echoed in the Australian utilitarian approach. For instance, the ECR report in 2000, documented that the main objective of Australian law system on intellectual property was precisely economic and ‘utilitarian, instead of being morally inclined. However, the Report depended heavily on the 1995, Competition Principles Agreement that supports intellectual property rights’ limitation so as to promote creative material dissemination to the end user. From this point of view, the law appears to promote infringement of copyrights on e-published content as long as the end-user (teacher or students) benefits. The association between copyright and authorship, as well as its philosophical bases, has recently been analysed extensively. A number of scholars as evidenced in Cantatore (2013) literature review have expressed conflicting perspectives with regard to authorship and copyright. Citing Saunders’ work, Cantatore (2013, p.101) posits that past diversities as well as internal incoherence has made the legal sphere the key hurdle to theory regarding authorship. On the other hand, there are a number of scholars view ‘author’s right’ and copyright as two distinct legal traditions that protects artistic and literary works, claiming that the philosophical premise of copyright is utilitarian. According to them, copyright law purpose is to promote generation of creative ideas cheaply. By contrast, the right of the author is based on the natural rights philosophy, whereby the author is eligible to his work protection as a matter of justice as well as right (Cantatore, 2013). Copyright law impact electronic publishers in terms of procedure of the copyright, author grant, copyright license as well as protections against copyright infringement; that is to say, the issues relating to the copyright law in digital publishing has resulted to scores of lawsuits between print publishers and electronic publishers. Piracy Issues In essence, eBook piracy has turned out to be an enormous concern for scores of countries together with its publishers. Based on Dutch firm GfK research, they established that just 10 per cent of all eBooks on the e-readers were paid for; thus, indicating that majority of e-books is pirated (Aldershoff, 2014). Besides that, Book Industry Study Group 2013 survey established that 34 per cent of US college students downloaded illegally eBook from illegal websites. In Russia, statistics in 2010 “Russia: Beyond the Headlines” magazine indicated that the 20 per cent of e-books used by students were pirated, considering that 70 per cent of Russians read eBooks. According to the magazine 92 per cent of eBook readers get their books from illegal websites. Piracy is costly for both publishers and authors considering that the Spanish publishing industry lost almost $467.1 million in revenue because of eBook piracy. Akin to other parts of the world, Australia e-publishers are as well facing this challenge, and lack of adequate laws protecting digital publishing place electronic publishing in the verge of extinction since the proliferating piracy widespread across the globe is casting a pall over this emerging market segment. E-publishing is a growing industry, and China is currently the world’s second biggest e-book market, and even though digital publishing industry has lately exhibited some developments thanks to the existing copyright laws, piracy still presents a big challenge. Most governments have defined laws for protecting the intellectual property, but according to Liang (2007, p.6) have failed to play a crucial role in e-publishing. Evidently, it is not easy for governments together with publishers and authors to control the enormous piracy of eBooks in the internet. Based on China Institute of Publishing Science statistics, just a mere 60% of Chinese people have an understanding on copyright concept. That is why it is less astonishing that majority of Chinese end users prefers pirated eBooks for the reason that they are cheap and easy to access, and completely disregard the authors’ interests and rights (Liang, 2007, p.30). Presently, piracy has more influence in the e-publishing industry, and this cannot be changed any time soon. As pointed out by Feather and Sturges (2003, p.515), any publishing as well as associated industries of nations, which are yet to agree to the international agreements on the intellectual property, have largely been trading pirated content. Piracy has existed for decades, and did not start after the emergence of internet; it has been prevalent in the print industry. Nowadays, as mentioned above, electronic piracy has resulted in loss of millions of dollars, and according to Enang (2013, p.8) majority of students in higher learning institutions depend on pirated eBooks so as to achieve their career objective, and as a result, e-book piracy has become a multi-million business. Electronic book publishing has continued to rapidly grow so as to meet the ever-increasing demands of the readers, but piracy has also continued being prevalent and more challenging. Currently, majority of publishers react to piracy with strict DRM (Digital Rights Management) software, but this has not deterred pirates rather it appears it motivates them. In adequate utilisation of internet, has resulted in the increase in piracy and download of material that are copyrighted. As stated by Enang (2013, p.9), the easy accessibility of e-Books that are pirated has negatively impacted the whole book publishing community, which includes publishers, authors, booksellers such as Amazon, and readers. Piracy affects ranges from tangible effects such as lower author royalties and low sales to the intangible effects such as decrease in the eBook perception. These days, piracy is being battled in the demesne of commoditised knowledge, and the rhetoric and law of unlawful utilisation, production, and distribution of electronic content revolves around policies that are more and more protective and in managing intangibles, like copyright, patents, and trademarks. Piracy as stated by Enang (2013, p.9) is an absolute hindrance to intellectual productivity in all countries across the globe, and this is attributed to the verity the electronic publishing industry is losing lots of money due to piracy. In consequence, if it continues at the current rate, it can result in the downfall of the eBook publishing industry. Piracy is no longer based only on downloading top-rated movies and songs, but also on downloading college textbooks. The reason why piracy in e-publishing is growing is attributed by the high costs of textbook, and so students prefer cheap pirated textbooks from illegal websites. According to Enang (2013, p.9), piracy has turned out to be seductive because students experience challenges purchasing electronic textbooks going for almost $100 while pirated ones go for less than $10. This is prevalent in developing countries, where learning institutions depend heavily on imported published materials that is exceeding expensive. And since most publishers have inflated the cost of eBooks, it becomes expensive for students, and as a result, the learners opt for the pirated eBooks that are very affordable. Moreover, eBooks piracy is growing not just because of high cost of course materials, but also because of the popularity of e-readers, Smartphones, and tablets that makes it easy for students to access pirated content in the internet. Conclusion In conclusion, it has been argued that the dramatic advancement of technologies has radically steered the development of electronic publishing. Undoubtedly, electronic publishing has turned out to be a notable phenomenon in the current digital age. As mentioned in the report, Internet has resulted in the transition from the traditional publishing industry to an innovative ways of disseminating digital content to end users. However, the incessant growth of e-publishing is facing a number of issues, and so copyright and piracy issues have been the main focus of the report. Copyright in e-publishing as evidenced in the report is experiencing unmatched setbacks, and laws passed to protect the copyright of published works seem to favour end users more than the authors. Besides that, the growing scenarios of electronic piracy have forced e-publishers to espouse technical protection systems which still appear to be ineffective, but revisions of copyright laws by governments seems to reduce the rate of piracy. References Aldershoff, J.W., 2014. 90% of Dutch E-books hasn’t been paid for – heavily pirated. [Online] Available at: HYPERLINK "http://www.myce.com/news/90-of-dutch-e-book-hasnt-been-paid-for-heavily-pirated-70404/" http://www.myce.com/news/90-of-dutch-e-book-hasnt-been-paid-for-heavily-pirated-70404/ [Accessed 2 May 2015]. Cantatore, F., 2013. From vault to honesty box: Australian authors and the changing face of copyright. Bond Law Review, vol. 25, no. 1, pp.98-143. Enang, U.U., 2013. Effect of Piracy on Publishing and Spread of Knowledge in Nigeria. World Journal of Library Administration, vol. 1, no. 1, pp.06- 14. Epstein, D.G., Markell, B.A. & Ponoroff, L., 2006. Making and doing deals: contracts in context. Dayton, Ohio: LexisNexis Matthew Bender. Feather, J. & Sturges, R.P., 2003. International Encyclopedia of Information and Library Science. London: Taylor & Francis. Henry, G., 2003. On-line Publishing in the 21st Century. [Online] Available at: HYPERLINK "http://www.dlib.org/dlib/october03/henry/10henry.html" http://www.dlib.org/dlib/october03/henry/10henry.html [Accessed a May 2015]. Liang, S., 2007. Developments and Obstacles in Chinese eBook Market. Lund, Sweden: Lund University. Shukla, D., Jharotia, A.K. & Goel, D.H.K., 2011. IMPACT OF E - PUBLISHING IN DIGITAL ERA. Delhi, India. Read More