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changes in the legislation must be considered, and thecultural industries are called upon to spearhead such innovation(keynote of Gottfried Honnefelder at BuchtageBerlin, June 2012). The practical consequences of this shiftare not yet entirely clear.Several specialized studies on ebook piracy in Germanyhave been conducted by industry organizations as well asindependent research teams.Börsenverein launched a survey on the emerging ebookmarket in Germany in March 2011 (a summary is availablehere) and followed up in late August 2011, in collaborationwith two other organizations of content industries, withits first comprehensive study on the topic: “Usage of DigitalContent”, (“Digitalen Content-Nutzung” or DCN).Key findings of the industry-sponsored study included afigure of 14.3 million Germans (or 22% of the total population)who had downloaded media content from the Internetin 2010, of which 3.7 million downloaded piratedcontent. Share-hosting platforms such as RapidShare dominatedillegal downloads of movies, TV programs, andmusic; “ebooks are exchanged remarkably often via email,”according to the study. In a growing number of cases, entiremedia libraries saved on external memory devices areillegally exchanged between users. In 2010, 17% of the totalpopulation of Germany, and almost 40% of those between10 and 29 years old, admitted to having swappedmedia content on external memory.Of those who admitted to downloading music illegally,73% claimed to have not spent any money on music in2010, and the remaining 27% made purchases of an averageof €18.00 per year for “physical products,” the studysays.The DCN survey instantly triggered a critical debate on themethodology employed and the implied assumptions ofthe study, drastically highlighting how wide the gap is betweenthe perspectives and approaches of representativesof the creative industries on one hand and consumer organizationsor independent voices on the other.Most of the criticism of the study focused on its definitionof what was considered an “illegal download,” as it includedall free downloads from “file sharing networks/ftpservers/newsgroup services/peer-to-peer networks/sharehosters/blogs,” which “results from the fact that themembers of the sponsors of the study do not publish theirproducts through these channels”. Considered among “legalsources” were downloads from commercial platforms,personal websites of artists/bands/authors/record labels,”and the like, including Project Gutenberg as well as platformssuch as YouTube and Clipfish (correspondence fromBörsenverein to the author of this study, August 31, 2011).Beyond such methodological issues, trade media alsoskeptically commented on the industry organizations’strategy of “painting it black” while neglecting to mentionthat “only 1 percent of Germans illegally read ebooks”(Daniel Lenz, “Frankfurter Schwarzmalerei”, (“Frankfurtpaints it black”), buchreport, 1 September 2011).A more detailed account that differed from that of Börsenvereinwith regard to methodology but agreed in termsof the assessment of ebook piracy having achieved a verysignificant presence in Germany was delivered by twostudies that were carried out by a team of two independentresearchers: Manuel Bonik and Andreas Schaale. Thefirst study was called “Gutenberg 3.0: Ebook-Piraterie inDeutschland”, (“Ebook Piracy in Germany,” released in January2011) and was later updated to “Gutenberg 3.1:Ebook-Piraterie in Deutschland (ein Update)” in October2011.The fact that illegal downloads had a prominent and growingpresence for German readers and Internet users wasdeduced from contexts of relevant Google searches:among the ten most popular combinations that includedthe word “ebook” in search queries, four were combinationswith terms including “rapidshare,” “free,” “torrent,” or“no cost.” However, the other six queries were formulatedin neutral ways, such as “download ebook” or “ebook reader”(Gutenberg 3.0 – Ebook-Piraterie in Deutschland, p. 5).Although Börsenverein focused its attention prominentlyon content-sharing platforms —which are most relevantfor music, movies, or film— Gutenberg 3.0 found that suchsources played only a modest or even a decreasing role forebooks, while the bulk of the illegal ebook downloads originatedfrom direct download links (DDL) such as Rapid-Share or Depositfiles, with 200 currently active platformson the Web. For example, in January 2011, 260 titles fromO’Reilly were offered by one P2P/Torrent site versus 1,940by a prominent DDL blog (Gutenberg 3.0 – Ebook-Pirateriein Deutschland, p. 8).A differentiated understanding of these sources is particularlyrelevant, according to the authors, as DDLs are moredifficult to challenge by rights owners, and users cannotbe easily prosecuted.Overall, Gutenberg 3.0 documented a steady and significantincrease in the reach of the most relevant web sources,as well as the emergence of a tightly knit web of DDLThe Global eBook Report 122