1234000000358_04042014_final

suffers not in spite of but because of the expansion of digitalmedia consumption.However, the Arab world is not a homogeneous market,even with regard to piracy. In the United Arab Emirates(UAE), the local production of pirated ebooks is not consideredan imminent threat to innovative businesses. Thegovernment of the UAE would like the entire country tobecome a regional leader in the development of a “knowledgesociety.” This ambition is reflected in the recent emergenceof several ventures —such as Rufoof and Qordoba— as well as the funding that such initiatives can raise fromboth local and international sources (an option hardlypractical for a company headquartered in Lebanon, suchas Nil WaFurat), disregarding the Levantine’s old traditionas a hub for books and publishing throughout the Arabworld.In addition, the authoritative practices and strategies withregard to piracy —or, more broadly, with regard to creatingthe legal framework to cope with the challenges from digitalmedia— is not well defined in any of the emergingmarkets.While several pieces of international legislation relevant topiracy have been abandoned (the Stop Online Piracy Act(SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the US and theCounterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) de facto at the Europeanlevel), a wave of studies and practical initiativeshave hit the media over the past 12 months or so, with littleconsensus on the parameters, drivers, or concrete goals ofthese activities.The issue was at the top of the agenda for industry organizationsacross the US, Europe, and the rest of the world(see the AAP at PW, March 15, 2012). New legislation hasbeen introduced at the national level in a number of countries,including Spain (under the acronym of SINDE, for alaw on the “durable economy, aiming at reforming copyrightSpanish law altogether”; Livres Hebdo, March 1,2012). At the same time, courts at the European level havelimited the direct responsibility and liability of providerplatforms for hosting illegal content on their servers. 1One challenge for the book industry is that the broaderdebate on copyright and infringements is predominantlydriven by the movie and music industry, thereby sideliningissues specific to books and reading. In many statisticaloverviews, ebooks are treated as a niche domain, withoutthe acknowledgment of the factors specifically affectingthis segment. For instance, due to the small file sizes ofebooks in comparison to audio MP3 files or digital video,peer-to-peer (or torrent) sites play an insignificant role inthe distribution of illegal ebooks, compared to file sharingand one-click-hosting (OCH) sites.In addition, the measurement of the number of downloadeditems must be handled differently for ebooks, as theconsumption of an ebook is much more time-consumingthan that of a piece of music. In return, for some marketswith particularly high penetration rates of piracy, such asin the Arab world, huge catalogues of illegal digital copiesof ebooks, together with links to filehosting sites, are availableon legal platforms such as Facebook, providing anarguably better consumer experience than any of the legalsites in the region.However, even for well-documented markets such as Germanyor France, for a number of reasons, no widely acceptedconsensus has emerged as to the scope and impactof piracy with regard to the emerging ebook market, or forthe best practices to act against offerings of illegally digitizedcontent.Controversial debates, legalinitiatives, and contradictorypractices in EuropeGermany, one of the leading content markets outside theEnglish realm, was rattled throughout the first half of 2012by controversies related to copyright and to practices consideredcontroversial with regard to current law on severallevels. A seemingly technical niche debate about the internationalAnti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) didnot become a front page topic until it was given up, at leastin its current form, by both the German government andthe European authorities. It split society into two sides,with Börsenverein lobbying for the agreement and a growingpolitical majority considering it a threat to civil rights.The very term pirate experienced an about-face, as a newpolitical party even ran in the parliamentary elections infall 2013 under the name of the Pirate Party. After initiallybroad media attention, the campaign had little success,1. The European Court ruled against the German collecting society (GEMA) on the installation of automated filters to prevent access to illegal contenton platforms such as YouTube, as such practices would impede freedom of information as well as the individual privacy rights of users. (Die Zeit,2February 2012).117 The Global eBook Report