Should we fight against ebook pirates? Is DRM an effective way to do that?
These two questions are answered in a very good infographic, embedded below. Developed by Who Is Hosting This, it puts together all most important facts about how piracy affects ebook sales, and how DRM affects piracy.
On one side, as much as 76% of academic texts are available from pirate sites. On the other hand, about the same percentage (75%) of ebooks in the US are bought from legitimate online stores. What’s even more important, two-thirds of ebook owners legally purchased all their titles.
So, the piracy doesn’t seem to drain as much money as anyone thinks. Is it thanks to DRM?
Tor Books UK reported there was no visible increase in piracy of its books after removing DRM from all titles for a year. Hot news is that Tor.com is starting its own DRM-free book imprint, focusing on e-books and print-on-demand volumes. And it’s just one of the examples that prove DRM isn’t changing anything.
In fact, this infographic is a very effective way to tell everyone afraid of stealing their intellectual property: after all, there is not so much to fear about.
A list of sources at the end of the visual is a further reference to get deeper into the topic.
More infographics to check out:
[ef-archive number=5 tag=”infographics”]
Leave a Reply