“In order to protect our authors´ rights and interests, Springer proactively screens websites for illegal download links of Springer eBooks and subsequently requires hosts of such download sites to remove and delete the files or links in question,” they write.
The sentence that follows, however, is perhaps of even more interest. While the company admits that piracy is a serious issue, they have yet to see any evidence that it hurts their business (emphasis added).
“While we have not yet seen harmful effects of eBook piracy and file sharing on our eBook portfolio, these are nevertheless considered serious topics,” Springer notes.
In addition to the revelation above, the publisher later notes that torrent sites and other forms of file-sharing “rarely present a threat to eBook content.”
It’s interesting to see that one of the largest book publishers in the industry doesn’t see piracy as a direct threat to its revenues. While Springer doesn’t go into details to explain the absence of a harmful effect, we have to assume that they have some data to back up this claim.
Michael Sauers is currently the Director of Technology for Do Space in Omaha, NE. Michael has been training librarians in technology for the past twenty years and has also been a public library trustee, a bookstore manager for a library friends group, a reference librarian, serials cataloger, technology consultant, and bookseller since earning his MLS in 1995 from the University at Albany’s School of Information Science and Policy. Michael has also written dozens of articles for various journals and magazines and his fourteenth book, Emerging Technologies: A Primer for Librarians (w/ Jennifer Koerber) was published in May 2015 and more books are on the way. In his spare time he blogs at travelinlibrarian.info, runs The Collector’s Guide to Dean Koontz Web site, takes many, many photos, and typically reads more than 100 books a year.
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“In order to protect our authors´ rights and interests, Springer proactively screens websites for illegal download links of Springer eBooks and subsequently requires hosts of such download sites to remove and delete the files or links in question,” they write.
