71 : The Global eBook Market: Current Conditions & Future Projections Börsenverein launched a rst survey on the emerging ebook market in Germany in March 2011 (a summary is available at bit.ly/AwA0TK) and followed up on this report in collaboration with two other organizations of content industries with its rst comprehensive study on the topic entitled “Usage of Digital Content” (“Digitalen Content-Nutzung,” or DCN) in late August 2011 (www. moniquewuestenhagen.de/11175_BVMI_PK_DCN.zip). Key ndings of the industry-sponsored study included a gure of 14.3 million Germans (or 22 percent of the total population) who had downloaded media content from the Internet in 2010, of which 3.7 million downloaded pirated content. Share-hosting platforms such as RapidShare dominated illegal downloads of movies, TV programs, and music “ebooks are exchanged remarkably often via email,” according to the study. In a growing number of cases, entire media libraries saved on external memory devices are illegally exchanged between users. In 2010, 17 percent of the total popula- tion of Germany, and almost 40 percent of those between 10 and 29 years old, have admitted to having swapped media content on external memory. Of those who admitted to have downloaded music content illegally, 73 percent claimed to have not spent any money on music in 2010, and the remaining 27 percent made purchases of an average of €18 per year for “physical products,” the study says. The DCN survey instantly triggered a critical debate on the methodology employed and the implied assump- tions of the study, drastically highlighting how wide the gap is between the perspectives and approaches of representatives of the creative industries on one hand and consumer organizations or independent voices on the other hand. Most of the criticism of the study focused on its de nition of what was considered as an “illegal down- load,” as it included all free downloads from “ le sharing networks/ftp servers/newsgroup services/peer-to-peer networks/sharehosters/blogs,” which “results from the fact that the members of the sponsors of the study do obliging internet service providers to hand over user data for prosecution by the authorities. It is joined in these activities also by various author’s initiatives under the slogan “Ja zum Urheberrecht” (“Yes to author’s rights”), led by a group of crime writers. Around 1500 authors signed the various petitions (Der Spiegel, May 10, 2012). In the wider context of the struggle, a broad wave of lings in 2011 and 2012 on behalf of the content indus- try resulted in thousands and thousands of legal notices against and penalty payments by private citizens for infringements, backed up by drastic PR campaigns with graphical images representing the creators of artistic work as violated corpses the result was a deepening of the rift between the rights owners and the consumers. In summer 2012, Börsenverein started a new cam- paign to promote a model similar to the Hadopi approach in France: warnings displayed whenever a user accesses unauthorized content on the Web. As confrontations rage in various arenas of the battle, Börsenverein—the central actor in the book publishing realm as opposed to other media such as music or lm— announced a change of strategies in June 2012. Earlier gospel was that a new adaptation of copyright legisla- tion with regard to digital was not necessary as long as current law was enforced. Gottfried Honnefelder, the organization’s acting president, stated at a forum of publishers in Berlin that the Internet was, after all, a new challenge for communication and cultural development: “As a result, we must acknowledge that copyright legisla- tion falls behind the reality of life in certain regards,” hindering more than encouraging the expression of creativity. Hence certain changes in the legislation must be considered, and the cultural industries are called upon to spearhead such innovation (keynote of Gottfried Honnefelder at Buchtage Berlin, June 2012). The practical consequences of this shift are not yet entirely clear. Several specialized studies on ebook piracy in Germany have been conducted by industry organiza- tions as well as independent research teams.
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