The effectiveness of these anti-piracy measures is often in doubt, since the pirated files usually reappear quickly elsewhere. But, according to new research they do have some effect.

Imke Reimers, an economics researcher affiliated with NBER and Northeastern University, examined the effectiveness of these takedown notices on book sales. The results, published in the working paper “The Effect of Piracy Protection in Book Publishing,” show that e-books sales increase as a result of the takedown efforts.

In her research Reimers compares sales of book titles before and after takedown notices are issued, to see the effect on book sales across different titles, genres and formats. The study is the first of its kind and reaches the conclusion that piracy protection increases e-book sales.

“This paper is the first to empirically analyze the interaction of online piracy and the legal market for books. It finds that piracy protection significantly increases regular unit sales of e-books, while the effect on physical formats is not as clear,” Reimers writes.

“E-books, the closest substitute for online piracy benefit from piracy protection by selling 15.4% more units, while there is no significant effect on other formats,” she adds.

A 15 percent increase in e-book sales is quite significant, and translates to millions of dollars in revenue across the industry. For other book formats, including hardcovers, paperback and audiobooks, no sales increase was observed.

The research controlled for a wide variety of third-party variables that could have influenced the results. Based on the current data Reimers is confident that the sales increase can indeed be attributed the takedown notices. However, she also spots differences in the impact on established and starting writers.

More specifically, piracy doesn’t appear to pose a threat to the e-book sales of starting authors and could even serve as a promotional tool.

“The effect varies by the title’s level of popularity. For well-known books and those by popular authors, online piracy mainly poses a threat to regular book sales, while authors who are just starting out could benefit from the additional platform. My results support this idea, at least for e-books,” Reimers writes.

TorrentFreak reached out to Reimers who notes that it might be a good idea for some authors to share some of their work online.

“I find no evidence that piracy protection is ‘bad’ for any books, but it seems that more obscure titles could benefit from the advertising effect of pirated versions. Some emerging authors offer their titles or excerpts of their titles for free on their websites – exactly to advertise their works. My results suggest that this might be a smart move,” she tells us.

The research is based on data from Digimarc, one of the leading piracy protection firms for the book industry. Needless to say, the company is happy to hear that their efforts indeed appear to have an effect.

“This new research strongly validates our position that Digimarc Guardian’s anti-piracy strategies provide a substantial return-on-investment for customers, in the form of increased legitimate sales and revenue,” Chris Shepard, Director of Product Management at Digimarc, informs us.

Digimarc assured TorrentFreak that they had no hand in the academic research other than providing the piracy takedown data.

The sales data used for the research comes from the leading independent e-book publisher RosettaBooks. Needless to say, they are also happy with the results.

“Rightsholders feel exposed or taken advantage of by piracy. We believe that Digimarc’s services improve our overall sales and the effect of dampened piracy greatly exceeds the cost of the service,” Greg Freed, eBook Production and Distribution Director at RosettaBooks tells TorrentFreak.

While the research indicates that takedown notices can have a positive effect on e-book sales, future research will have to show whether or not this can be generalized to other industries, including the movie and music business.

In any case, with the above in mind it’s expected that the volume of takedown notices will only increase in the near future, a trend that has been going on for several years now.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Soon enough regular people learned the skills to put up a rudimentary webpage, but it wasn’t until the advent of mainstream file-sharing networks that anyone could become a publisher of information, simply by putting a file in a folder.

As a result countless pieces of media – from music and video, to documents, artwork and software – were distributed by individuals to every corner of the Internet-enabled globe.

Over the years many thousands of curiosities have appeared online in this manner, such as unfinished movies, unreleased songs, top-secret military documents, plus all manner of sundry ephemera subsequently given almost eternal life. Today, fans of writer J.D. Salinger will have something particularly extraordinary to talk about.

What.cd, an invitation-only BitTorrent tracker, is probably the most coveted source of music on the Internet. The site is a veritable goldmine of audio of every conceivable genre, all wrapped up in the best software interface the BitTorrent site world has to offer. But technicalities aside, what the site has is an incredible community that contributes to the enjoyment of every other member of What.cd, and not just with music either.

Yesterday one of What.cd’s users uploaded an amazing set of files – three previously unpublished stories by reclusive American writer J. D. Salinger.

As can be seen from the screenshot above, the first story offered was The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls, a coveted piece some Salinger experts describe as a “superior” work.

“Of great intrigue are the works of JD Salinger which he has determined to remain unpublished,” reads a piece on Dead Caulfields, a site dedicated to the works of the writer.

“The author’s decision to withhold these pieces is a never-ending source of speculation. Initially, Salinger anxiously submitted many of these stories to various magazines for publication, but by 1950, he increasingly begins to draw them back. The term ‘unpublished’, when referring to Salinger, is but a mild indication of the ferocity with which these works are guarded,” the site explains.

Only adding to the intensity is the fact that The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls is only available to read at the Princeton library and under supervision in a special reading room. It is one of two titles bound up in a legal agreement which forbids the release of the work until fifty years after Salinger’s death. He passed away in 2010.

Of course, that agreement now lies in tatters. The stories have escaped What.cd and are already doing the rounds on The Pirate Bay and other torrent sites. Only adding to the previously unpublished works’ availability, the entire set now available for anyone to read on image upload site, Imgur.

This leak, like hundreds before it, raises many questions, both legal and moral.

As his work, Salinger was obviously entitled to do whatever he liked with these stories and following his death those wishes seem to have been carried out by those he entrusted them to. However, one has to question why even after death someone would choose to consider a work so ‘exclusive’ as to wrap it up in security and hide it away from those who might enjoy it most.

Has Salinger been financially damaged due to the works being made widely available to anyone who cares to read them? Absolutely not. Is Princeton in a worse position now that the lid has been blown off their ‘secret’ possession? Hard to say.

There will be those who say that morally the user on What.cd shouldn’t have uploaded the stories as this was against Salinger’s wishes. But isn’t the world a richer place today now that he has? If information isn’t shared and people aren’t allowed to benefit from its availability, one really has to question the point of its existence.

Whether Salinger fans are delighted or outraged at these leaks, one thing is pretty much certain. No matter what side of the fence they sit on, fans will read these stories – possibly several times over – and worry about the morals later.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Boasting a collection of tens of thousands of eBooks, Springer is one of the larger publishers dealing with this emerging threat.

To show what they’re doing to prevent the unauthorized distribution of eBooks, the company has recently updated its anti-piracy strategy. Like most other copyright holders, Springer is mainly focused on sending takedown requests.

“In order to protect our authors´ rights and interests, Springer proactively screens websites for illegal download links of Springer eBooks and subsequently requires hosts of such download sites to remove and delete the files or links in question,” they write.

The sentence that follows, however, is perhaps of even more interest. While the company admits that piracy is a serious issue, they have yet to see any evidence that it hurts their business (emphasis added).

“While we have not yet seen harmful effects of eBook piracy and file sharing on our eBook portfolio, these are nevertheless considered serious topics,” Springer notes.

In addition to the revelation above, the publisher later notes that torrent sites and other forms of file-sharing “rarely present a threat to eBook content.”

It’s interesting to see that one of the largest book publishers in the industry doesn’t see piracy as a direct threat to its revenues. While Springer doesn’t go into details to explain the absence of a harmful effect, we have to assume that they have some data to back up this claim.

Despite the lack of a concrete threat, the publisher does target central download hubs and commercial sites that sell their content. Springer says that during the summer these anti-piracy efforts have resulted in the shutdown of several ‘unnamed’ illegal sites.

Springer further writes that concerned authors send in 100 notifications about illegal copies every month. Interestingly, half of these notifications don’t really point to infringing material, but spam.

It appears that many authors are falling for fake download advertisements, and the publisher recommends that its authors should ignore these.

“As a rule of thumb links with names like ‘fast download,’ ‘direct download’ or similar frequently turn out to be spam and are not critical in terms of piracy,” Springer explains, adding that the real threat comes from books that can be downloaded “without any barriers such as installations or payments.”

Finally, while P2P file-sharing isn’t seen as a priority for Springer, the company warns its authors away from downloading their own books, or even installing a BitTorrent client as that may result in legal trouble.

“Don’t install sharing clients such as ‘utorrent’ or others,” they warn.

Springer’s final recommendation is a bit over the top. After all, there are several book authors who use BitTorrent to share and promote their work. This includes best-selling author Paulo Coelho who says that piracy increased his sales tremendously.

But perhaps that’s a bridge too far for Springer.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

In recent years ‘watermarking’ has been expanded into the digital domain. All kinds of digital media can be quietly marked in order to identify the origins of the content, which has proven particularly useful with the ‘dots’ to be found in Hollywood movies. By tracking these marks within pirate copies of movies, studios are able to identify which theater they were ‘cammed’ in.

Digital watermarks can also provide much more person-specific information. Vendors of digital data, such as MP3 retailers, sometimes put watermarks into the media they sell in order to identify the original purchaser. The idea is that if people believe they can be identified as a ‘leaker’, then they are more likely to keep their content close to their chests.

Of course, despite the presence of watermarks, content still manages to leak online. However, the digital watermarks in consumer purchases rarely directly identify the original purchaser of the content, meaning that anti-piracy companies have to go through other processes to get their man. A cozy arrangement in the Netherlands tackles this problem with ease.

The new digital distribution deal for eBook merchants will see them ‘watermark’ unique codes into the digital eBooks they sell which will identify a specific transaction number. These transaction numbers will be linked directly to a specific customer account.

So far the process isn’t much out of the ordinary, but the new deal will also bridge the missing link between random-looking transaction numbers in a digital file on the Internet and a real person’s identity.

The agreement will see vendors connected to the eBoekhuis platform share previously-private customer data directly with copyright holders and anti-piracy group BREIN. This means that should digital books turn up on BitTorrent networks or Usenet for example, with a minimum of fuss BREIN will be able to match the embedded watermarks with the customer who bought them.

According to the document seen by EReaders.nl, eBook vendors will be required to store customer transaction data and make it available to BREIN and rightsholders for a minimum of two years.

The problematic sharing of customer information with a third-party (who could potentially sue them) will be solved by informing customers at the point of sale that their details may be shared with outsiders if their account is linked to abuse.

Whether customers will read the terms and conditions is open to debate, but if brought specifically and clearly to their attention it’s likely that many would think twice before parting with cash.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

To counter this threat, publishers are constantly looking for new forms of DRM. With financial support from the Government and backing from the publishing industry, researchers at the Darmstadt Technical University in Germany launched SiDiM, a project to find DRM innovations.

One of the solutions being worked on at the moment aims to make individual ebooks unique through so-called “text watermarks.” The researchers have developed a technology that will make small changes to book texts so each buyer gets a unique copy. If the book is later uploaded to the Internet it can be easily traced back to the source.

“The goal of the SiDiM project is to develop new protection measures for eBooks and electronic documents. Texts in digital format are particularly threatened by unauthorized copying, for example via the Internet,” SiDiM’s Dr. Martin Steinebach explains.

“A solution to this problem is to alter documents with visible and invisible marks that make a single copy distinguishable. Users are encouraged to take responsibility their their copy and it will deter illegal file-sharing, as copies can be traced using these marks,” the researcher adds.

While the general story-line will remain intact, the DRM shuffles some words around, inserts synonyms, changes the paragraph format or the punctuation. For example, the word “unsympathetic” could be changed to “not sympathetic,” and so forth.

The researchers see this as a ‘consumer-friendly’ form of DRM as it doesn’t lock the book to an account or prevent copying between devices.

Whether readers will be equally enthusiastic remains to be seen. Since the process is completely automated there is a risk that errors will occur. For example, sentences may no longer carry the nuances intended by the author.

To see what kind of reception the text alterations might receive, publishers and authors have been sent a list of 15 “text watermark” examples along with a request to assess the changes.

The researchers don’t explain how they intend to deal with creative pirates, who might add in their own alterations, so it’s unsure whether the system is foolproof.

While the “text watermarks” are not particularly intrusive for readers, the assumption that all consumers are potential criminals may not sit well with everyone. Additionally, most book fanatics will probably want to read the book the way the author intended.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

In the months that followed Wiley filed more than a dozen mass BitTorrent lawsuits involving a few hundred John Doe defendants in total.

The Does are all accused of sharing digital copies of titles including “Hacking for Dummies,” “Wordpress for Dummies” and “Cooking Basics for Dummies.”

Wiley’s lawyer previously told TorrentFreak that their intention is to settle these cases with the alleged infringers for an undisclosed amount. However, more recently the book publisher also requested default judgments against those who failed to respond.

Two of these defendants were subjected to a default judgment yesterday by New York Federal Judge Laura Taylor Swain.

Tammy Roberts of Clifton Springs, New York, was sentenced for sharing “Photoshop CS5 All-In-One For Dummies” and Fred Burgos of Brooklyn, New York, for sharing “Herb Gardening For Dummies” on BitTorrent. Both have to pay a total of $7,000 in damages, the amount as requested by Wiley.

Interestingly, Wiley accused the BitTorrent users of both copyright and trademark violations. $5,000 of the damages were attributed to copyright infringement and the other $2,000 to trademark infringement.

According to the complaint Wiley is worried that pirated copies may damage the “For Dummies” brand as they may be of inferior quality or bundled with viruses.

“The damage to Wiley includes harm to its goodwill and reputation in the marketplace for which money cannot compensate. Wiley is particularly concerned that its trademarks are used in connection with unauthorized electronic products, which could contain malicious viruses,” it reads.

While the defendants certainly didn’t get off lightly, the damages awards against them pale in comparison to three other default judgments that were handed down in recent months. In Illinois three men had to pay $1.5 million each for sharing seven to ten movies using BitTorrent.

Despite the victory for Wiley it is uncertain whether the book publisher will continue to press action against BitTorrent users. Many of their mass BitTorrent lawsuits have been dismissed recently and Wiley hasn’t filed any new ones since September last year.

But then again, with the prospect of millions of dollars in settlements and default judgments, there are plenty of other copyright holders to fill that void.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The patent in question was granted to Professor of Economics Joseph Henry Vogel. He believes that piracy, lending and reselling of books is a threat to the publishing industry.

“Professors are increasingly turning a blind eye when students appear in class with photocopied pages. Others facilitate piracy by placing texts in the library reserve where they can be photocopied,” Vogel writes.

The result is less money for publishers, and fewer opportunities for professors like himself to get published. With Vogel’s invention, however, this threat can be stopped.

The idea is simple. As part of a course, students will have to participate in a web-based discussion board, an activity which counts towards their final grade. To gain access to the board students need a special code, which they get by buying the associated textbook.

Students who don’t pay can’t participate in the course and therefore get a lower grade.

The system ensures that students can’t follow courses with pirated textbooks, as tens of thousands are doing today. Lending books from a library or friend, or buying books from older students, isn’t allowed either. At least, not when the copyright holders don’t get their share.

Vogel’s idea leaves the option open for students to use second-hand textbooks, but they still have to buy an access code at a reduced price. This means publishers can charge multiple times for a book that was sold only once.

Needless to say, publishers are excited about gaining more control in the classroom. Anthem Press of London has already expressed interest in the system and Pat Schroeder, president of the Association of American Publishers, also welcomes the idea.

“For every rogue site that is taken down, there are hundreds more demanding similar effort. I can’t think of a more timely example of the need for additional tools,” she says.

On the surface the idea might seem well-intentioned, but to proponents of an open knowledge society it goes completely in the wrong direction. If anything, the Internet should make it easier for students to access knowledge, not harder or impossible.

While it’s understandable that publishers want to stop piracy, preventing poor students from borrowing textbooks from a library or friend goes too far.

Perhaps it’s a better idea to approach the problem from the opposite direction.

Thanks to the Internet, publishers are replaceable. And since many of the textbook authors are professors who get paid by universities, it is not hard to release books in a more open system.

Professor Vogel believes that sending more money to publishers helps academia, which might be a flawed line of reasoning. Isn’t it much better to strive to make knowledge open and accessible, instead of restricting it even further?

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

By filing a mass-BitTorrent lawsuit the company followed mostly in the footsteps of several movie studios, who together have sued more than 250,000 people in the US since early 2010. And the publisher didn’t stop at just one.

In recent months Wiley has filed more than a dozen mass BitTorrent lawsuits involving a few hundred John Doe defendants in total. The Does are all accused of sharing digital copies of titles including “WordPress for Dummies,” Hacking for Dummies” and “Day Trading for Dummies.”

Talking to TorrentFreak, Wiley’s attorney William Dunnegan said previously that one of the main goals of the legal campaign is to obtain the personal details of the alleged infringers and offer them the opportunity to solve the matter through a settlement.

“Our intention is to stop the infringement and let individuals know that they are violating the law and depriving the creators of the works of rightful compensation. Our preference is to educate, settle, and prevent further infringement,” Wiley’s attorney William Dunnegan told us.

However, this strategy doesn’t always work. While the courts and Internet providers have been cooperative in assisting Wiley to obtain the personal details of the alleged book pirates, a new filing suggest that some defendants are not taking the publisher’s settlement offer.

In a one of Wiley’s cases four defendants have now been named in an amended complaint.

New York residents Jeff Ng, Ralph Mohr, Robert Carpenter and Xiaoshu Chen are no longer anonymous Does. Wiley is proceeding to call for a full jury trial against the quartet in which they will face accusations of copyright infringement and up to $150,000 in penalties for each offense.

Contacted by TorrentFreak, Wiley’s attorney William Dunnegan declined to comment on the recent developments in these specific cases. “We are proceeding with these cases as a part of Wiley’s overall copyright enforcement and education program,” was the comment we got instead.

If one or more of the three cases indeed proceeds to a full trial it will be the first time that actual evidence against BitTorrent infringers is tested in court. This is relevant because the main piece of evidence the copyright holders have is an IP-address, which by itself doesn’t identify a person but merely a connection.

In a past RIAA court case experts described the evidence gathering techniques “as factually erroneous”, “unprofessional” and “borderline incompetent.” In addition, academics have shown that due to shoddy technique even a network printer can be accused of sharing copyrighted files on BitTorrent.

If the evidence is indeed tested in court, it should be a case to watch for sure.

That said, there’s also the chance that the lawyers are using the threat of a full trial by jury as a pressure tool to convince the defendants to settle. After all, the RIAA’s litigation campaign against individual file-sharers has shown that even when a jury awards hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages, lengthy trials cost more than they bring in.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Today delivered another surprise when the site suddenly began redirecting to Google books.

Initially it was unclear what motivated the site’s owners to take these drastic actions, but a statement by a coalition of the world’s largest book publishers including Cambridge University Press, Harper Collins, Elsevier and John Wiley & Sons, seems to have cleared up the mystery.

The publishers obtained an injunction against Library.nu and the cyberlocker ifile.it from the regional court in Munich. They claimed that both sites were operating an unauthorized “internet library” that made available more than 400,000 high-quality e-books. In addition, the publishers said the sites made $11 million in revenue.

The court agreed with the publishers and the owners of the sites were served with an order to halt their infringing activities.

As a result, both sites have voluntarily pulled their services offline. Library.nu now redirects to Google books and ifile.it has put up a message stating “no upload servers currently available.”

However, this doesn’t mean that the picture painted by the book publishers is accurate. TorrentFreak spoke to the owner of ifile.it who told us that they can barely cover the server costs with the revenue they make.

“The site only had premium accounts since November 2011. It was free since 2006 and still is free for those who want to use it for free,” the owner told us.

The legal team of the publishers estimated the revenue based on page impressions as well as estimated income from premium accounts, but this figure is laughable according to the ifile.it owner, which makes sense considering the site’s modest size.

The owner further said they always try cooperate with publishers and that the site is still fully operational for registered users.

Responding to the news, the book publishers declared victory.

“This action reflects our commitment to protecting secure, safe, and legitimate use of the Internet,” said Stephen M. Smith, President and CEO of John Wiley & Sons.

“It is also evidence of the growing strength of the international community of content creators and providers taking all available legal measures against large illegal platforms,” he added.

Jens Bammel of the International Publishers Association, the umbrella organization responsible for tracking down the owners of the two sites, described the file-sharing sites as criminal outfits.

“The global publishing industry has once again shown that it can and will stand up against large-scale organised copyright crime,” Bammel says commenting on the news.

“We will not tolerate free-loaders who make unearned profits by depriving authors and publishers of their due compensation. This is an important step towards more transparent, honest, and fair trade of digital content on the Internet,” he added.

Despite the preliminary success, there are no guarantees that both sites will remain inactive. ifile.it, for example, is still working as usual for registered users.

Update: response added from the ifile.it owner, who noted that they only shut down anonymous uploads.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

John Wiley and Sons have sued 27 Does at a federal court in New York for downloading and sharing copies of its “For Dummies” books using BitTorrent. The complaint (pdf), obtained by TorrentFreak, shows that all defendants allegedly shared the books on October 18 and 19 of this year.

Wiley argues that through the massive piracy that occurs on BitTorrent, their company is suffering severe losses that might cost several authors their jobs.

“Defendants are contributing to a problem that threatens the profitability of Wiley. Although Wiley cannot determine at this time the precise amount of revenue that it has lost as a result of peer-to-peer file sharing of its copyrighted works though BitTorrent software, the amount of revenue that is lost is enormous,” Wiley’s attorney writes.

“For example, BitTorrent users on a single site, demonoid.me, have downloaded one of the works that is the subject of this suit, ‘Photoshop CS 5 All-In-One FOR DUMMIES,’ more than 74,000 times since June 6, 2010,” the complaint adds.

Other pirated books listed in the complaint include familiar titles such as “AutoCAD 2011 for Dummies,” “Day Trading for Dummies”, “Calculus Essential for Dummies” and “Word Press For Dummies”. Interestingly, the popular “BitTorrent for Dummies” is not included.

Aside form the direct financial damage through copyright infringement, Wiley also claims that “counterfeit” copies of their books may result in damage to the company’s image.

“The damage to Wiley includes hark to its goodwill and reputation in the marketplace for which money cannot compensate. Wiley is particularly concerned that its trademarks are used in connection with unauthorized electronic products, which could contain malicious viruses.”

“Wiley is also concerned that these unauthorized electronic editions of its works may be of inferior quality to the original versions,” the complaint reads.

The 27 defendants are all accused of copyright infringement, trademark infringement and trademark counterfeiting, and the publisher demands to be compensated for the damage they have caused.

The court papers end with an overview of the 27 IP-addresses through which these titles were shared. These are all located in the State of New York according to the attorney.

Although Wiley’s suit can be classified as a mass-BitTorrent lawsuit, the complaint is quite different from the ones we’ve seen thus far. Also, Wiley has hired the law firm Dunnegan LLC which has no track record of filing similar cases.

At this point it is not clear whether Wiley is determined to take the 27 defendants to trial, or whether it will offer them settlements as we’ve seen in nearly all other cases thus far. However, there is little doubt that Wiley’s move to make a stand against book piracy will be watched closely by other book publishers.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.