22 April 2008

A Trade Association at Work

U.S. book publishing industry association fights piracy

A Harry Potter fan in Denmark. Pirates have sold fictitious titles in the J.K. Rowling series. (Francis Dean/The Image Works)

(The following article is taken from the U.S. Department of State publication, Focus on Intellectual Property Rights.)

A Trade Association at Work
By Patricia L. Judd

Books are everywhere around us. Popular titles, such as the Harry Potter® series or Nobel Prize winner V.S. Naipaul's A House for Mr. Biswas, can be found in bookstores all over the world. Books serve as tools for entertainment and education, as well as professional, personal, and societal development.

Unfortunately, legitimate authors, publishers, printers, distributors, and retailers are often denied the opportunity to satisfy the world's appetite for books because rampant print piracy, commercial photocopying, illegal translations, and digital piracy work to destroy the market for legitimate materials. Symptoms of this phenomenon abound:

• In and around universities and schools, copyshops that make it easy to illegally photocopy works often have lines out the door.

• English-learning programs and other language courses advertise use of high-quality materials and display original products, but then use illegally photocopied versions in their lessons.

• Medical book pirates conduct door-to-door sales, without fear of reprisal.

• Pirates marketed fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth books, supposedly in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter® series, at a time when the author had written only four!

Today's technologies make it easy for pirates to copy whole books, robbing authors of their intellectual property. (© AP Images)

These activities – often seen by many book consumers as harmless – hurt legitimate creators, foreign and domestic producers and – ultimately – every national economy. Every country has students who may be primarily users of information now, but who will be creators in the near future. Every country has writers and scholars, and most also have publishing or printing industries that are suffering from the same type of piracy encountered by U.S. publishers. Creators will more likely stay in their home countries if they are able to produce an income from their talents there. Protecting their ability to do that serves them and their countries as well as their publishers.

The Association of American Publishers (AAP), the principal trade association of the U.S. book publishing industry, estimates that its members lose over $600 million dollars a year because of global piracy. This number, unfortunately, is a gross underestimate, based on calculations of losses in just a few countries and territories. Nevertheless, this figure alone underscores the need for improved enforcement in many places, and adherence to international copyright standards by all countries, since copyright pirates prey on authors, businesses, and consumers around the globe. Proof of this is that AAP raids abroad almost always uncover illegal copies of local materials.

AAP supports the international fight against copyright pirates by partnering with local counsel, investigation firms, member company offices, and government officials to ensure that both the public and private sectors are doing everything possible to stamp out these crimes. AAP projects include legal action, data collection, training, and media efforts to educate governments and consumers about the harms inflicted by piracy.

AAP and its members also work, where appropriate, with local publishers to identify projects for possible collaboration. Currently, AAP has active programs in Hong Kong, Malaysia, the People's Republic of China, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand. The association also works closely with its international counterparts in Pakistan, India, and several other countries.

On the policy side, AAP cooperates with U.S. and foreign government agencies to promote passage and enforcement of stringent intellectual property laws. The association also monitors developments in legal or practical market access. AAP contributes significantly to the annual "Special 301 Report on Global Copyright Protection and Enforcement," submitted to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) by the International Intellectual Property Alliance® (IIPA) every February. IIPA, of which AAP is a founding member, uses this report to update the status of copyright protection in 50 to 60 countries and territories worldwide. Finally, AAP regularly discusses intellectual property rights (IPR) issues at book fairs, seminars, and conferences in the United States and overseas.

In all of this, AAP works to educate the public about the ways in which copyright protection promotes creativity, which in turn is essential to the development of markets, not only for U.S. publishers, but for each and every country's creators and related industries.

AAP members and staff are interested in work that benefits creators and publishers in all countries and territories, and would welcome your input.

For more information, please contact:

Patricia L. Judd
Director, International Copyright Enforcement
50 F Street, N.W., Suite 400
Washington, D.C. 20001
pjudd@publishers.org
www.publishers.org

[Patricia L. Judd is the director of international copyright enforcement for the Association of American Publishers.]