The European Commission’s Vice-President has admitted that EU copyright law is “pushing people to steal,” because users end up seeking pirated copies of e-books that might not be able to legally purchase in their own country.

Many people within the European Commission are publicly stating that one of the reasons why piracy is running rampant is because of Geoblocking. Actually, this has has nothing to do with copyright law – it’s a contractual issue concerning the markets that the publisher has purchased the right to distribute the material into and what ones they don’t. This is why the big events like the London Book Fair, Frankfurt Book Fair and Book Expo America are so important. They provide avenues for publishers to sell the distribution rights into other markets and have the works properly translated.

Amazon, Apple, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, and Google operate digital bookstores where customers can purchase and read e-books. Sadly, these retailers do not provide service in every country in the world. This is primarily due to publishers rights in that specific region or the bookseller not having the proper infrastructure to provide proper service. All of the big companies have their own content delivery network (CDN) or have server farms in order to quickly send data.

Does the lack of accessibility drive people to pirate?

I don’t think its the lack of accessibility, but the cultural drive to consume things for free, without having to pay for it. Just because the digital title might not be available in your own country, you can still likely order the print edition online.

DTI News recently did a report on e-book piracy in Vietnam. They stated “The problem here is the awareness of the copyright. In developed countries, where customers always believe that they have to pay for all products and services, thus facilitating the development of e-publication. Meanwhile, Vietnamese people have the habit of using products and services free of charge.”

China is the second largest e-book market in the world and their digital publishing industry has shown impressive growth. e-books, digital newspapers, and digital magazine grew by 52.6% in 2012. It is currently estimated that 200 million Chinese consumers read digitally on a daily basis.

The big problem in China is not e-book piracy, but the need to replicate physical books and sell them cheaper or offer digital versions for free. The local publishing industry has not really tackled this problem in a meaningful way, because its considered a cultural norm. Some companies do speak out though, “It’s unavoidable to have so many pirated books on the market. I think all local publishinghouses should cooperate to combat piracy and build a market with a more rational order.” Said Wu Hong, vice editor-in-chief, Shanghai Translation Publishing House.

That is certainly a tall order no doubt, given that cheap pirated editions crop up on a regular basis. In fact, a parallel industry thrives in China where they take pride in coming up with exact clones of the original, be it electronics or anything else. There have even been instances of an entire Apple store being replicated in China, which should be a clear indicator of how seriously they value their replicating skills.

Meanwhile in Spain e-book piracy resulted in €350 million in lost revenue for the €3 billion Spanish publishing industry in 201 according to a new report from Spain’s Federation of Publishers’ Associations and Spain’s ISBN Agency.

How can we Combat Piracy?

Hardly any countries have a clearly defined, unified anti-piracy standard, because publishing companies compete against each other. If they magically banded together to discuss the issue, it would be collusion. This is would be illegal in the US and would likely be considered to be forming a Cartel, which is illegal in the EU.

France has stepped up their game to combat digital piracy. They ran national promotional campaigns that featured young actors and celebrities to build cultural awareness about this issue. Libraries and bookstores also got into the action, letting their customers know, this is bad behavior and has to be curtailed. Their efforts helped boost digital content sales by anywhere between 5% and 30%, depending on the content.

The United Kingdom is set to unveil a brand new anti-piracy campaign aimed at educating people about copyright and legal ways to download digital content, but e-books are not even the focus.

The goal is to send emails to UK internet users who pirate films and music, warning them that their actions are illegal. Those suspected of copyright infringement will be sent up to four warnings a year, but the campaign does not include any punitive action, reports the BBC.

How will content providers be able to track who is downloading what from where? Well, four years ago the UK government brokered talks between media outlets and internet service providers. This resulted in the creation of the Voluntary Copyright Alert Program (Vcap) and is supported by the largest UK ISPs , the UK recorded music industry trade association BPI, and the Motion Picture Association. In a few months time, a massive new campaign will begin to get this thing rolling.

Oh Well

Many anti-piracy measures currently being employed worldwide are to protect the film and music industry. There simply hasn’t been any meaningful anti-ebook campaigns because as much as the publishers bemoan this is a problem, no one is really doing much to solve it.