Guradian reporting
The book business likes to invoke those days too and repeatedly assures us it is not going to make the mistakes the music industry made. Unfortunately, the conclusions it seems to have drawn are that the recorded music business wasn't draconian and heavy-handed enough, that it didn't issue enough take-down notices and didn't sue enough children and sweet old ladies. They seem not to have realised that the only way to compete with pirates is to offer a better product and better service; a better combination of price, convenience and availability.
Or if they have realised it they're being awfully slow in doing anything about it. Ebook piracy has been a realistic prospect for decades but publishing hasn't come up with any convincing alternative. Pricing is confused, the products are badly made, the marketing is non-existent or horrible.
It's taken two technology businesses – Apple and Amazon – to really spur them into action. I hope they get this soon. Otherwise, we face the prospect of every ebook starting with a two-minute, unskippable video of a noted author persuading us that book piracy is the moral equivalent of murder. That was Hollywood's ingenious solution to the same problem. I wonder how that's working out.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/apr/24/ebook-piracy-threat-comment?CMP=twt_fd
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