eBook Piracy Solved!

A while back, I remember a New York Times article on the popularity of the ebook (this was before Christmas of 2009, or the "Christmas of the Kindle"). The article was correctly predicting that Kindles and various other e-readers were only becoming more popular, etc. Nothing crazy. But one part that jumped out at me was a quote from an unspecified publishing executive who thought that the book industry wouldn't have the problems of the music industry with file sharing and piracy because–and I'm paraphrasing here–the "nature" of the industries are so different. It seemed like wishful thinking at the time.

Since then, we've seen that as ebooks become more and more popular, so will piracy. In 2010, the first major case of book piracy was Dan Brown's THE LOST SYMBOL, which had hundreds of thousands of downloads just days after it launched. I tend to think he got off easy. The workflow of the book industry is actually much more open than, say, films. Obviously, pubs will have to crack down on who gets to see MS files, but that doesn't change the fact that an MS file is just a few kBs. It can be emailed a thousand times. A movie file is just a little harder to send around in the early goings, since they're GBs. And even so, films like "The Incredible Hulk," and "Wolverine" had pirated copies online weeks before their launch dates.

So basically, books are even easier to pirate than films or music. The files are super small, and the industry doesn't have very good security measures. Also, they're generally more expensive than a DVD or an album, so all the more reason to pirate them.

But wait, there's one advantage that books have…which is usually considered a disadvantage…they're long! They take hours to consume! No one could ever read all of them! And that is the key–IMHO–to limiting book piracy.

I don't know about you, but when I download films…erm…just kidding! I mean when I hear about people illegally downloading films, the biggest issue is getting corrupt files. They spend all this time downloading the thing, and the colors are off, or there's no sound. The only way to solve this problem is for file sharers to view the file and verify that it's good. Same with music.

But imagine if pirates had to read an entire book to make sure the content was correct. (Actually, it'd be pretty awesome if people starting reading tons of books out of spite.)

So here is what I propose: Publishers could pay someone to create hundreds of differently corrupted manuscript files and release them online. The ending could be the ending to MOBY DICK. Chapter 13 could be nothing but ipsum lorem. Every pages could be from a different book of the publisher's spring catalog. It doesn't matter. It would simply render the file unreadable. Sure, you could parse together that last installment of the HUNGER GAMES, but why would you want to?

The length of the content and the relative difficulty for pirates to do quality assurance could allow publishers to flood the black market with fake files. Any real copies of the leaked MS would get drowned out. At least, it would be much harder to find.

I know BitTorrents have metrics in place to weed these people out. Eventually, your seed to leech ratio would get all whacked out, but I think there are ways around that. Obviously, it would be a full-time job for someone to juggle different accounts, etc. Also, I'm speaking out of my depth here, so maybe someone can explain that part to me.

I'd love to talk to someone about this. I wonder if I'm just missing some obvious reason why it wouldn't work. If it does work, however, I submit that we call it, "Spartacussing." That or, "Polyjuicing."

Note: My brother-in-law is my tech guru and this idea actually originated when he told me that there is a trend similar to this in digital information security. Basically, the idea of securing something used to be all about locking it up in the toughest safes imaginable (both literal and metaphorical). But now, one form of securing something is to take the file and throw it into a sea of other stuff. No one can possibly wade through all the randomly generated junk to find the valuable information, but basically, it's right out in the open. It just happens to be indistinguishable from everything else.

I may have misunderstood a lot of what he said–I often do–cause he'll mention something crazy sci-fi and I tune the rest out.