TOPICS

Books for Rent

RECTO: The Bibliophile's Heaven in the City

The Future on Demand: The "Print on Demand" as the future of the Philippine Book Industry

The Pirates of the Publishing Industry

by Kelvin Angelo R. Paulino

A stroll along commercial establishments in the vicinity of major universities in the metro such as the shopping center of the University of the Philippines, Diliman or Asturias Street perpendicular to the University of Santo Tomas is enough to convince one of the incessant prevalence of book piracy. The powdery odor particular to photocopiers hovers permanently above these places while the ceaseless whirring of the machines whispers their brisk business.

Studying has become more expensive over the past few years. Apart from the spiraling costs of tuition and other fees, expenses related with attending classes such as fares and food have also gone up. For the students with limited allowance, photocopying has become the standard procedure in obtaining copies of their required readings. This method would cost them way cheaper rather than buying original copies of the books.

Some, on the other hand, resort to this method due to the unavailability of the requisite materials in local stores.

The end result however is opposite the students' initial intentions. Low revenue caused by piracy forces publishers to increase the prices of books.

"You make books more expensive. You think you're saving but you're not. You're actually destroying the industry," warns Atty. Ma. Andrea Pasion-Flores, executive director of the National Book Development Board (NBDB), a government agency tasked to support the Philippine book publishing industry.

A student photocopying a significant portion of a book may seem inconsequential at first. However, in 2007 alone, the estimated trade losses due to book piracy reached a total of $49 Million.

The shortfall is also compounded by a more organized modus operandi by commercial-scale pirates. These unscrupulous traders avoid stockpiling infringed goods to evade raids and complicate entrapment operations. Instead, they work on a print-to-order basis.

Further, the problem of book piracy is aggravated by another growing threat to intellectual property rights: mobile device piracy. Here, infringed files are loaded into mobile devices such cellphones, MP3 devices, flash drives, and even hard drives. Most common books and journals pirated in this medium are medical and nursing titles. Pirates target medical students and practicing physicians who want easy access to these materials.

This thriving menace to the Philippine book publishing industry has kept the country under the watch list of an influential business lobby based in the United States for the third year in a row. In its 2008 Special 301 Review, a basis of actions on US foreign trade partners, the International Intellectual Property Alliance recommended an out-of-cycle review to monitor developments detrimental to the copyright industry.

"What is alarming about that when people do that is they don't realize for foreign publishers the market is much wider. What they lose here they can recover in another market. For Philippine publishers, the local market is their only market. When you pirate, what you are actually doing is limiting some more the market of the local publishing industry. It stunts the growth of the book industry. What you have is some savings immediately. But what you are doing is discouraging creativity. You're discouraging the authors because there is no money coming back to them," Pasion says.

To combat this problem the NBDB has been developing fair use guidelines for classroom use that would help delineate the length or amount of material which can freely be copied. The goal is to clearly define "fair use" in numbers of words and pages so that it may not be used as defense against piracy.

Further, the agency also urges the creation of a collective management organization where "rights-holders of the book publishing industry band together to form an organization so that they may be able to enforce their rights."

"The fair use guidelines are important but what we need to have is an operational reprographic rights organization," Pasion says.

It is very important to solve the problem of book piracy and give back to the authors and publishers what is due of them. However, the solution must not forget to consider the interests of the readers. Apart from being long and arduous, eradicating the problem is a balancing act on a tightrope.

"It's a very tricky thing for the industry," Pasion says.