72 : The Global eBook Market: Current Conditions & Future Projections (DDL) such as RapidShare or Deposit les, with 200 cur- rently active platforms on the Web. For example, in January 2011, 260 titles from O’Reilly were o ered by one P2P/Torrent site versus 1,940 by a prominent DDL blog (bit.ly/wYhzpE, p. 8). A di erentiated understanding of these sources is particularly relevant, according to the authors, as DDLs are more di cult to challenge by rights owners, and users cannot be easily prosecuted. Overall, Gutenberg 3.0 documented a steady and signi cant increase in the reach of the most relevant web sources, as well as the emergence of a tightly knit web of DDL sources and blogs promoting and pointing to available ebooks. The illegally obtainable title catalog by far outreached the legal o erings, as it listed about 100,000 ebook titles as of January 2011. Most of the titles seem to have been scanned, not cracked from legal digital publications. In a preliminary conclusion, the Gutenberg authors wonder whether “it is altogether reasonable to further promote selling ebooks altogether” in view of the mas- sive threat of piracy (Gutenberg 3.0, p. 25). In their October 2011 update, Gutenberg 3.1, the authors of the piracy study came to even more radical conclusions, highlighting the decrease in (printed) book sales in Germany, notably in the bestselling segment (–27 percent for the top three bestsellers and –29 per- cent for the top 30 for the rst half of 2011 versus the same period in 2011). The authors’ conclusion—which obviously strongly equals the occurrence of piracy and e ective lost sales, a link that can be questioned—is that the “more than average growth in piracy correlates with the more than average decrease of revenues” in the segment of bestselling titles, so it can be “assumed that the revenue losses (in printed bestsellers) are caused by piracy” (Gutenberg 3.1, p. 4). Not only new and bestselling titles are released illegally by pirate networks in addition, a growing cata- log of backlist titles—mostly textbooks and ction—are not publish their products through these channels.” Considered among “legal sources” were downloads from commercial platforms, personal websites of artists/ bands/authors/record labels” and the like, including Project Gutenberg, as well as platforms such as YouTube or Clip sh (correspondence from Börsenverein to the author of this study, August 31, 2011). Beyond such methodological issues, trade media also skeptically commented on the industry organizations’ strategy of “painting it black” while neglecting to men- tion that “only 1 percent of Germans illegally read ebooks” (Daniel Lenz, “Frankfurter Schwarzmalerei” [“Frankfurt paints it black”], buchreport, September 1, 2011). A more detailed account that di ered from that of Börsenverein with regard to methodology but agreed in terms of the assessment of ebook piracy having achieved a very signi cant presence in Germany was delivered by two studies that were carried out by a team of two independent researchers, Manuel Bonik and Andreas Schaale. The rst study was called “Gutenberg 3.0: Ebook-Piraterie in Deutschland” (“Ebook Piracy in Germany,” released in January 2011) and was later updated by “Gutenberg 3.1: Ebook-Piraterie in Deutschland (ein Update)” in October 2011. The fact that illegal downloads had a prominent and growing presence for German readers and Internet users was deduced from contexts of relevant Google searches: among the ten most popular combinations that included the word “ebook” in search queries, four were combina- tions with terms including “rapidshare,” “free,” “torrent,” or “no cost.” However, the other six queries were formulated in neutral ways, such as “download ebook” or “ebook reader” (bit.ly/wYhzpE, p. 5). Although Börsenverein focused its attention very prominently on content-sharing platforms—which are most relevant for music, movies, or lm—Gutenberg 3.0 found that such sources played only a modest or even a decreasing role for ebooks, while the bulk of the illegal ebook downloads originated from direct download links
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72 : The Global eBook Market: Current Conditions & Future Projections (DDL) such as RapidShare or Deposit les, with 200 cur- rently active platforms on the Web. For example, in January 2011, 260 titles from O’Reilly were o ered by one P2P/Torrent site versus 1,940 by a prominent DDL blog (bit.ly/wYhzpE, p. 8). A di erentiated understanding of these sources is particularly relevant, according to the authors, as DDLs are more di cult to challenge by rights owners, and users cannot be easily prosecuted. Overall, Gutenberg 3.0 documented a steady and signi cant increase in the reach of the most relevant web sources, as well as the emergence of a tightly knit web of DDL sources and blogs promoting and pointing to available ebooks. The illegally obtainable title catalog by far outreached the legal o erings, as it listed about 100,000 ebook titles as of January 2011. Most of the titles seem to have been scanned, not cracked from legal digital publications. In a preliminary conclusion, the Gutenberg authors wonder whether “it is altogether reasonable to further promote selling ebooks altogether” in view of the mas- sive threat of piracy (Gutenberg 3.0, p. 25). In their October 2011 update, Gutenberg 3.1, the authors of the piracy study came to even more radical conclusions, highlighting the decrease in (printed) book sales in Germany, notably in the bestselling segment (–27 percent for the top three bestsellers and –29 per- cent for the top 30 for the rst half of 2011 versus the same period in 2011). The authors’ conclusion—which obviously strongly equals the occurrence of piracy and e ective lost sales, a link that can be questioned—is that the “more than average growth in piracy correlates with the more than average decrease of revenues” in the segment of bestselling titles, so it can be “assumed that the revenue losses (in printed bestsellers) are caused by piracy” (Gutenberg 3.1, p. 4). Not only new and bestselling titles are released illegally by pirate networks in addition, a growing cata- log of backlist titles—mostly textbooks and ction—are not publish their products through these channels.” Considered among “legal sources” were downloads from commercial platforms, personal websites of artists/ bands/authors/record labels” and the like, including Project Gutenberg, as well as platforms such as YouTube or Clip sh (correspondence from Börsenverein to the author of this study, August 31, 2011). Beyond such methodological issues, trade media also skeptically commented on the industry organizations’ strategy of “painting it black” while neglecting to men- tion that “only 1 percent of Germans illegally read ebooks” (Daniel Lenz, “Frankfurter Schwarzmalerei” [“Frankfurt paints it black”], buchreport, September 1, 2011). A more detailed account that di ered from that of Börsenverein with regard to methodology but agreed in terms of the assessment of ebook piracy having achieved a very signi cant presence in Germany was delivered by two studies that were carried out by a team of two independent researchers, Manuel Bonik and Andreas Schaale. The rst study was called “Gutenberg 3.0: Ebook-Piraterie in Deutschland” (“Ebook Piracy in Germany,” released in January 2011) and was later updated by “Gutenberg 3.1: Ebook-Piraterie in Deutschland (ein Update)” in October 2011. The fact that illegal downloads had a prominent and growing presence for German readers and Internet users was deduced from contexts of relevant Google searches: among the ten most popular combinations that included the word “ebook” in search queries, four were combina- tions with terms including “rapidshare,” “free,” “torrent,” or “no cost.” However, the other six queries were formulated in neutral ways, such as “download ebook” or “ebook reader” (bit.ly/wYhzpE, p. 5). Although Börsenverein focused its attention very prominently on content-sharing platforms—which are most relevant for music, movies, or lm—Gutenberg 3.0 found that such sources played only a modest or even a decreasing role for ebooks, while the bulk of the illegal ebook downloads originated from direct download links

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