UNESCO’s ‘Open Access’ policy is promoting a flow of ideas and helping narrow the knowledge gap between industrialised and other nations
In recent years, publishers, authors and booksellers have been plagued by piracy, copyright infringements and resulting sales losses. Book pirates directly threaten publishers by running websites that offer quick and free downloads of e-versions of the books. Thus, online book piracy poses the same threat to legitimately produced and distributed books that pirates and buccaneers pose to lawfully registered boats on the high seas.
The Association of American Publishers claims that the book publishing industry in the United States alone loses $80 to $100 million to online piracy every year. Other art forms such as films and music have also fallen prey to piracy. According to the UK-based piracy tracking company MUSO, members of the illegal downloading community paid more than 300 billion visits to pirate websites in 2017.
As internet connectivity and bandwidth have continued to grow, so has online piracy. Recently, in a decisive step, publishing giants, including Penguin Random House and HarperCollins, took legal action against OceanofPDF, an e-book piracy website, which led to its deactivation. However, OceanofPDF is just one of thousands of websites that mushroom every day and sprout back under different domain names when discovered.
Online piracy has both technical and socio-economic implications. While the rapid proliferation of creative products online often makes it almost impossible to check their authenticity, or to distinguish between the real and the fake, pirated books may understandably have a certain appeal for those keen to obtain books at cheaper prices or for free. Unsurprisingly, more than four million e-books — or 17 per cent of all e-books — are pirated.
Unfortunately, piracy of popular books is rampant in India, too. Best-selling author Jeffrey Archer was once famously approached by a vendor at a traffic light who tried to sell him a pirated version of one of his own books. Indeed, reproducing a book along with its jacket is one of the most common forms of piracy in India, and often dupes readers into buying pirated books.
Piracy in the education sector is also widespread. As recently as March, over 30,000 pirated National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) books worth Rs 5 million were seized by the Delhi Police. Despite their low prices, piracy of school and college textbooks in India tends to be alarmingly high. The delayed availability of books creates an artificial scarcity that pirates capitalise on.
UNESCO lauds the Government of India’s efforts to protect the book trade through successive amendments to the Indian Copyright Act (1957). These amendments have sought to make the infringement of copyright a punishable offence. However, there have also been occasional setbacks relating to the recognition of copyright in the country.
For instance, a prominent case in 2016, involving a leading academic publisher and a photocopy service provider, saw the Delhi High Court rule, “Educational institutions do not require a licence or permission from publishers for making and distributing course packs to students if the copyrighted materials included in them [are for] instructional use.” With escalating demand for educational resources in India, it is imperative that we build a robust culture of honouring copyright and appreciating its importance.
At UNESCO, we have chosen to make all our electronic publications freely accessible and downloadable. We are proud that our adoption of an ‘Open Access’ policy is legitimately promoting the unrestricted flow of ideas and helping narrow the knowledge gap between industrialised and other countries. Besides, since 2010, UNESCO has maintained the World Anti-Piracy Observatory (WAPO), a free online platform to raise awareness on copyright legislation, news and announcements of events related to the fight against piracy worldwide. Going forward, sustained advocacy campaigns targetting students and teachers at various levels can contribute effectively to the ethical consumption of creative and educational content.
In a world where the internet is uber-present, copyright infringements have become rife and the lines between the authentic and inauthentic are often blurred, let us arm ourselves against book pirates and expose piracy for the crime it is.
(The writer is Director, UNESCO and a representative to Bhutan, India, Maldives and Sri Lanka)
