The article on the Bookseller Association's blog posted on February 18, 2007 deals with digital rights management and is titled "Piracy on the Digital Highway." The author states that "all media seems under siege by the pirates in the digital arena." Therefore, is it such a good idea to get rid of DRM as Steve Jobs mentioned last week? The movie industry feels threatened, as the music industry does. The author suggests that it is only a matter of time before protections of copyrighted materials are removed and an open access arena is opened on the internet.
How pirates gain control over the movie and music media so freely and distribute it is explained: "Today we have Pirate Bay, a multi media version of the original file sharing Naptser. The site is as big as USA Today and its 1.5 million visitors and growing. It uses file sharing BitTorrent software and Envisional, a UK company that tracks illegal downloading for Hollywood studios estimates that 4 million surfers in North America and Europe use Bit Torrent on a daily basis. The technology is so efficient that the BBC has adopted it for distributing its programme archive."
The movie industry is taking more steps in protecting DVDs than the music industry is with CDs. There is more effort put into protecting DVDs from being copied easily, but it is done and even the new Blu-Ray or HD DVDs have flaws that allow copying of the disc content.
"The Sunday Times, in an article on piracy stated that recent Treasury report on Intellectual Property concluded that DRM constraints and over protection actually encourages innovation and the next big thing that consumers seek... Maybe just as with the pop pirates of the 1960's the digital pirates of today will force a significant change in the market."
The book publishing industry is contemplating whether to go head first into DRM and digital file management or stand back and wait for the rest of the industries using digital media figure out what is most effective: open access or restrictive DRM. This will influence how digital books online play out.
Source: http://bookseller-association.blogspot.com/2007/02/piracy-on-digital-highway.html