It might seem that now that it has been standardized to pay for a monthly subscription to Netflix, Filmin or HBO, piracy and series of Seriesyonkis and Emule are history.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Cedar, the Spanish resustment rights center that defends the rights of autors and publishers of books, magazines, newspapers and scores (something like a union of the authors and editors) detects more than 152,000 fraudulent pages of which finally
112,092 are unintended.
The last report of the Observatory on Digital Piracy of Cultural Products showed an increase of 10% in users who access books illegally.
According to the study, with data of 2019, the market value of the nearly 600 million pirated content is 5,277 million euros.
The novelties are the ones that worse stops: 7 out of 10 pirated books were less than a year.
33% of respondents read books to which it accesses fraudulently.
Piracy tripled during confinement.
The improvement of the Internet connection and messaging services have made a book to share a question of a click, “something practically instantaneous”, explains Daniel Fernández, president of Cedro.
In recent months, Facebook groups that shared books and 122 telegram channels have been closed with 400,000 users in which ebooks, newspapers and magazines were shared.
“With Facebook we come to an agreement, but are there are people who send books by whatsapp! We are talking to them and although it is the same company as Facebook, they tell us that they are different departments,” says Fernández.
“There is a lot of trap there. A lot of people have installed a virus on the mobile or the computer when I was looking for the last book of Pérez Reverte”.
Who filters the books?
There is not a single guilty, or at least that demonstrate the evidence of crime.
On the network are shared from photocopies of books to photographed chapters, evidence without correcting or manuscripts with pre-printing brands.
An entire Trojan horse from the editorial ecosystem, which can filter “from the literary agency to the publisher, passing through the printing press and even from the media. That is why many manuscripts are already sent to journalists with watermarks. It is tremendously
Easy to share a file “.
And yet, people keep buying paper books.
“It’s one of the paradoxes of the system, we all know that kind of non-reader that tells you that paper is history, which has 2,000 books on your iPad or your electronic reader, and that you know that you do not read, that you have accumulated by
Greed or greed, “adds Fernández.
In that context of Wild West Online, Cedro works, which in the last two years has created a series of tools to fight against pirates who never rest.
The SAD (Digital Antipiracy Service) is a chandelier program that tracks the network in search of fraudulent copies.
Every time he finds one, he requests the withdrawal and disregarding the URL to the search engine, which is usually Google.
The vast majority of publishers (213 in Spain) have implemented the system, which has more than 51,000 works registered.
Another system that uses is called Follow The Money and is to address the advertisers of the pirate pages to withdraw their advertising.
Sometimes they do, others do not.
40% of the books that are published ends up being illegally shared.
“It’s a barbarity, but it’s part of that digital world in which a click does not suppose anything for a user.”
It is tempting to think that if we have become accustomed to paying to see series and movies that were previously downloaded, it could happen the same with reading.
But the idea of a netflix of books has never been well seen by the sector, although many indicators point out that subscription services are the future.
In Germany, Austria and Switzerland have skyrocketed in the last year and a half, above the purchase of ebooks.
And its growth goes beyond the confinement boom.
“In his day I heard that the book would not exist in 2000, then they said that in 2010, which in 2020. Now they are saying that 2030. It is like the death of the novel, which overflows health on all sides,” jokes
Fernandez.
“There are already inciatives type Netflix but the stone that holds the arch of the building of literary creation is respect for the right to the author, the world of the book is very atomized. The cinema passed through a process of concentration of producers; we are already seeing
Netflix, Apple and Amazon exercise as such. But in the book sector there are many editorials and I have nothing clear that a similar concentration process comes forward. The electronic book is friendly and laptop, yes, but it has not yet managed to beat the
Book on paper, which is resisting. Even the investment banks are saying lately that the editorial business is a safe value with enough years ahead. ”
After much debate, Europe adopted two years ago the copyright directive in the single digital market, a rule that is still in the process of transposition to Spanish ordering.
“We’re late because I should have been done in June, but it’s normal to be done late.”
The Directive will make the entire market of the European Union a single digital market, a reality that is linked to another “macro” problem, that of the “fiscal harmonization of the European Union”.
Said with fewer euphemisms: that large technological companies enter the traditional economy and as all companies do, they pay in different countries according to the real business volume they develop in them.
The Directive will also favor users who can transfer their contracts within the EU.
“It’s like in the times of roaming, do you remember when we went to France and paid twice as to talk on the phone there, until the European Union solved it? The Directive also aspires to solve this issue and to set a European, non-American model
, copyright and fair remuneration for digital uses. That should result in the authors, “explains Fernandez.
And he adds: “It is a model of collective management because no one is powerful enough to sit down to talk to these giants, for not calling them monsters.”
Not everything has been a path of roses.
The Directive underwent two votes and although artists like David Guetta, Paul McCartney, Ennio Morricone, the French band Air and James Blunt have shown their support, there has also been a strong opposition in countries like Germany.
“Spain has always voted in favor, both socialists and popular, the problem in Germany is that within the left there is a movement that competes with the pirate party and there is a discussion with this topic, in my opinion, wrong. All revolutions want to finish
with copyright and then realize that in the end, it is a deeply reactionary measure. ”
For Fernández, break the system that protects the Berne convention for 135 years would be like “return to dark times of the Middle Ages”.
“If dynamites the system, what will the authors live? Of patrons?”
