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Literary Review
The bane of book piracy
REUTERS
BOOK piracy, the illegal reproduction of books, has assumed menacing proportions over the last two decades. In India, about 15,000 publishers publish about 70,000 books annually in 22 languages. According to the Federation of Booksellers and Publishers Association of India (FBPAI), book piracy poses a major threat to the 7000-crore publishing industry in the country and results in a loss of 400 crores to publishers in India.
A survey by the Indian Human Resource Development Ministry indicates that three types of print piracy are prevalent in our country. The most common one is reprinting a book illegally. The second type involves publishing books using the name of famous authors, but actually authored by imitators. Producing translated versions of foreign-language books is the third type of piracy. The pirates do not have to pay taxes, and, of course, no royalty to the author.
Asian and Latin American countries, according to international book publishers, are the countries where book piracy has assumed alarming dimensions. The inter-American Publishers Group estimates that globally about 50 billion book pages are illegally reprinted every year!
Book piracy has been rendered easy by new technologies. To reprint a book illegally, all that a culprit needs is two copies of the original, a scanner, a computer with optical recognition programme and a small rotary press. With these common facilities, a pirated book can be produced in a few days in multiple copies. Ironically, pirated books also have the warning, "reproduction is forbidden!" The adoption of modern technology in piracy makes it difficult for anyone to identify the pirated book from the real one, even by the authors and publishers; not only is the text copied but also the design, the cover, the colour and the bar code.
Among the many forms of piracy, the illegal reproduction of books is the most menacing. The pirates, who are well organised, reprint entire books at a cheaper rate than the original. Invariably, they offer unfair competition to genuine publications. In the past, such pirated editions were of poor technical quality and as such could be easily identified. However, currently, with the availability of vastly improved inexpensive book reproduction technologies, the pirated book versions can look almost like the originals. Such books are sold through small booksellers, who are not accountable to any sales laws and who do not care for business ethics. Book piracy is a thriving trade in poor countries, involving a profit greater than that in legal book trade. Piracy denies the author his genuine income from creativity. It decreases tax revenues for the government.
Reprography — the method of obtaining photocopies — is common in educational institutions all over the country. This is the main reason for the inability of the publishers to sell books in adequate numbers, especially textbooks. A whole book or many chapters are photocopied by students. The students, and even the teachers, are unaware of the infringement of copyright acts when they photocopy books. Under section 63 of the Copyright Act of India, selling and buying photocopied books is a criminal offence. The photocopying menace rampant only in developing countries where students can ill-afford to buy books.
The most pirated books are fast-moving college books. Books on specialised subjects, such as engineering and medicine, are very expensive and consequently extensively photocopied in colleges. The teachers themselves organise photocopying of books without any moral compunction, assuming that they are after all helping their students. Among the students, medical students are believed to depend on large-scale photocopies of books, as medical books are mostly authored and published in foreign countries; such books are expensive in India.
In India, illegal reprinting of books, which is rampant for run-away best sellers, and photocopying jeopardises the legal sale of books. The main reason for this menace is the high cost of books in our country and the poor economic background of our students. Containing book piracy should necessarily be a multi-pronged strategy. All school managements should be directed by the respective regulatory authorities to stock large numbers of books in school libraries. In addition, the school should be advised to give the students only books as prizes for students' achievements. NGOs should adopt educational institutions in their neighbourhood and give book-grants to them. The University Grants Commission may plan to grant Rs. 10,000 annually to each college teacher for buying books relevant to his subject. Investment on teachers is an investment for the country's future. The library grants currently given by the UGC to colleges is paltry and irregular; this grant should be increased ten-fold with an annual commitment.
Parents of school children should be educated to encourage reading habit among their children. This habit needs to be inculcated at an young age. Several parents unhesitatingly spend Rs. 20,000 on a TV but frown upon their children spending a few hundred rupees on books.
The government is spending huge amounts on questionable subsidies, primarily for wooing voters. If they spend a fraction of this on subsidising book publications — especially those used by students — piracy can be contained. One way of discouraging book piracy is for the government to encourage book publishers by offering them tax concessions, lowering the sales tax, granting special reduction in income tax to publishing houses, subsidising the printing of university-level books with consequent reduction in book prices. Such a price reduction would encourage readers to buy more books, which in turn can catalyse increased production and profit for publishers.
The public libraries, established by various government-supported agencies are in a state of neglect. The annual budget for these have steeply decreased when actually the book prices have phenomenally increased in the last two decades. The public don't patronise these libraries as in the past, as they do not find sufficient number of modern books stocked there. A committed programme for buying books by these libraries would encourage the publishers to reduce book prices. Commercial advertisements may be included in books, the payments from the advertisers substantially meeting the book production costs and consequently reducing the cost of books for buyers.
Eliminating book piracy is not going to be easy; laws alone would be ineffective and inadequate. Publishers also should evolve strategies to reduce book prices; they should find ways to reduce book prices without endangering their economy.
The writer is Director, Indian Institute of Publishing, Chennai.
R. GOPALAN
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