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In Germany, the by far the largest wholesaler, Libri, hadsuccessfully started to expand its foreign-language packagesto retailers almost a decade ago, as could be seen inthe ever-growing foreign-language selections in the largestchain stores, notably Thalia. Although these foreignlanguageshelves used to be occupied predominantly byliterary classics, it is now the latest releases of bestsellingfiction from the US and, to a lesser degree, the UK thatconstitute this segment’s profile.More recently, an increasing number of online shops haveadded dedicated English catalogs with an increasing numberof titles, even in countries like France, Italy, or Spain,which were traditionally more difficult to access forforeign-language reading.Amazon, which expanded its presence with localized onlinestores in Italy and Spain in 2011, is strongly promotingits English catalog as well as increasingly broad offeringsin other languages, both in print and for the Kindle.But the strongest force in the emergence of an internationalweb of English reading is probably Amazon’s integrationof its ebook catalog, with the Kindle reading platformand an increasingly uniform pricing policy ready toflatten the differences in what an ebook costs a consumeracross markets.eBook piracy in Europe: Theexample and debate inGermany, and related findingsMethodological issues with regard tothe research on piracyThroughout media history, the emergence and penetrationof markets by new media have been intimately intertwinedwith the advent of piracy and challenges to thecurrent business practices of those in control of the respectiveold media. Providing an example from the earlydays of the movie industry, a recent, highly authoritativestudy says bluntly, “Piracy was, we have seen, absolutelycentral to the birth of the film industry.” (Peter Decherney:Hollywood’s Copyright Wars: From Edison to the Internet.Columbia University Press 2012) In fact, piracy and thesubsequent legal battles were instrumental in the formationof the movie industry. The studios that dominated thenew-born industry for decades after the outcome of thoselegal battles owed their strong position in large part tothose early innovators and explorers of the new technologyof film who, in the end, had been labeled as pirates. Inpractical terms —which are not necessarily identical to legalconsiderations— the label piracy can refer to differentissues under different circumstances.In the context of fragile, emergent, under-regulated, andunder-controlled markets such as those in large parts ofthe Arab world or, similarly, in Russia, piracy can be a directthreat to the precarious infrastructure of the book business.A good example of this is Lebanon’s (and the Arabworld’s) first online book shop Nil WaFurat. Its founder,Saleh Chebaro, explained in 2012 during an interview forthis report how the upswing in the consumption of digitalmedia content paradoxically turned out to be essential tothe further development of this platform. With the adventof smartphones and tablet computers and with the spreadof mobile access to the Internet, a rapidly increasing numberof consumers in Arab countries gained daily access tomusic, movies, social media, and text on their devices.Most of this content has become an integrated digitalstream of digital media —with the exception of books. Becauseebook publishing in the Arab language is still in suchan early stage, digital books are accessible only as piratedcopies. As soon as a book shows initial success with readers,pirated versions appear within days, both digital (inPDF format) and printed. To make the situation worse,many of the most popular platforms for the distribution ofvarious digital content, such as Apple’s iTunes and equivalentlocal channels, will not carry many Arab languagebooks alongside their extensive selections of music andmovies. As a result, a relatively well-established platformfor the distribution of books online, such as Nil WaFurat,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.The Global eBook Report 97