The dilemma of book piracy in third-world countries

Piracy of any kind is illegal, but is it unethical?

20 min readJun 19, 2022

Copyright laws have been a topic of dispute for a long time. They are criticized for restricting entry to the world of knowledge, of those who don’t afford it. On the other hand, copyright laws ensure that creators of content don’t go unrecognized for their creative work, and are rewarded for the effort they put in creating beautiful content. This is where I find myself, amid this dilemma, where I can make only one choice — either busy myself with the knowledge available to me in the form of books or take a bold step and leave the opportunity at hand in respect of authors, who made this wonderful opportunity available to millions of readers. Before making this difficult decision, I decided to dive deep into this dilemma and try to understand it.

Stepping into Intellectual Property
What is Copyright?
— 1. Moral Rights
— 2. Economic Rights
— Economic Rights vs Moral Rights
Diving into Book Piracy
History Time
The Need/ Justification of Copyright
— Fair Use
The Problems with Copyright
— Knowledge as Luxury
— Economic Inefficiency
Some Loopholes in the Dilemma
— Stealing Knowledge
— Fair Use is not that Fair
— Libraries unable to solve it
The Ultimate Solution
The Meanwhile Solutions
Wrapping Up

To understand this dilemma better, we first need to understand what does copyright mean and why it was put up in the first place.

Stepping into Intellectual Property:-

C:\Windows\Properties\Intellectual Property\

Just like we own some property like land, governments recognize another kind of property known as Intellectual Property. It refers to:

“creations of the mind, such as inventions; literary and artistic works; designs; and symbols, names and images used in commerce”.

Similar to land properties, no one is allowed to forcibly (or deceivingly) acquire someone else’s intellectual property. Intellectual property is of various kinds, among which most popular are:

Trademarks (related to businesses)
Patents (related to scientists and inventors)
Trade Secrets (also related to businesses)
Copyrights (related to creative artists, including but not limited to: authors, designers, musicians, etc.)

IP laws are completely useless, is not quite true. They have been proved very beneficial, especially with Trademarks and Trade Secrets, but things get a little complicated with Patents and Copyrights. The fact is that all the types of intellectual property are different from each other, and we cannot evaluate their purpose and existence in one place. So here, I will restrict myself to just one type — an important one — Copyright.

What is Copyright?

C:\Windows\Properties\Intellectual Property\Copyright\

In simple terms, copyright means the ownership of a creative work. Initially, this ownership is granted to the creator of the work (except work for hire), but it can be transferred to anyone just like any other property. Before moving on, it is necessary to discuss what a creative work is. Creative work is any kind of work in which creativity of a human mind is manifested.

“Wait a minute! Isn’t everything we do a manifestation of our creativity?”
“Yes it is! Our talking itself is a very creative work, but…”
“Can you please elaborate what do you mean by the terms creative or creativity?”
“Well…um…I don’t know myself.”

To be honest, I cannot explain what is a creative work and what is not, but what I can tell is what we usually mean by creative work when we talk about copyrights. In terms of copyrights, creative work usually means:-

Writing (novels, poems, books, reference works, newspaper articles, etc.)
Fine Artwork (Paintings, Sculpture, Drawing, Sketching, etc.)
Computer Programs & Databases
Performance Art (Drama, Choreography)
Musical Composition
Multimedia (Film, Video, Photographs)
Designs (Illustrations, Architecture, Maps, etc.)
Advertisements, etc.

These are the works generally regarded as creative work. One important thing to note here is that copyrights apply only to the particular expression of an idea and not the idea itself. For example, consider the Tom and Jerry franchise. All animated movies or episodes, and specific characters of “Tom” and “Jerry” are protected by copyrights which are the expression of an idea. However, copyright doesn’t protect the underlying idea of the funny rivalry of a cat and a mouse. Therefore, anyone is free to create a tv series of their own with the same theme of a cat and mouse and their funny relationship — sometimes rivalry and sometimes friendly, but the characters should have a different sketch and the specific expression (animations in this case) should be different.

Coming back to the definition of copyrights. It is basically the ownership of any of the creative works listed above. This gives rise to another interesting question, what is actually ownership? I have a copy of The Alchemist so does that mean I own its copyrights or that I am the creator of the work? But there are also millions of others who own a copy of it. So what does the ownership represent here?

The ownership of a creative work means having two kind of rights regarding it:

Moral Rights
Economic Rights

Understanding these two types of rights will make the picture of copyrights more clear.

1- Moral Rights:-

C:\Windows\Properties\Intellectual Property\Copyrights\...\Moral Rights\

Moral rights mean that the creator of a work has the right to call himself or herself, the creator of that work. Additionally, the creator has the right to object to any distortion or modification of his/her work.

2- Economic Rights:-

C:\Windows\Properties\Intellectual Property\Copyrights\...\Economic Rights\

Economic Rights mean that the copyright owner has the right to choose how his/her creative work is going to be used, because this determines who benefits from the work, economically . The owner can decide who is allowed and who is not allowed to:-

reproduce the work in various forms, such as printed publications or sound recordings; (downloading is also a sort of reproduction)
distribute copies of the work;
publicly perform the work;
broadcast the work to the public;
translate the work into other languages; and
adapt the work, such as turning a novel into a screenplay.

Economic Rights vs Moral Rights:-

Have you noticed I used the word creator for moral rights, and owner for economic rights? Actually, when I wrote that copyrights are transferable, I was wrong — partly. The first part of copyrights — Moral Rights — in almost all countries is NOT transferable. And this is completely fine. If John makes a painting and sells it to David — along with the copyrights. That doesn’t mean David has the right to claim that he made the painting himself. It is morally incorrect (even if the seller has made an agreement about that). That’s why they are called moral rights. By contrast, economic rights are completely transferable.

When discussing ‘who owns the copyright of something’, we mean economic rights only. It is understood that moral rights are owned by the creator of the work as they are non-transferable. According to my research, there has not been any criticism on moral rights of the creator, as they do not limit the availability of a work to any group of society. The whole debate regarding copyrights, piracy, and equality revolves around the economic rights.

Diving into the Problem — Book Piracy

What I have written before is a simple explanation of the system, but what I will write next will be based on my opinions.

Now we have some basic understanding of what all that copyright stuff means. Subsequently, we are in a better position to discuss the problem and find its solution. Before making this attempt, I will narrow down the scope of our work a bit more. As we recall, copyrights are used to protect various kinds of creative works including music, software, books, etc. Different types of creative works have different importance for every individual, and every category has a different impact on the whole society. For example, in my opinion, if a child belonging to a low-income family does not has access to knowledge and information (due to unaffordability), it is a much bigger problem than if he does not have access to entertainment in the form of movies. The point is: the types of creative work are like different planets, and same laws do not (and can not) apply cross-planet . The world of software is particularly very unique.

My main concern was access to knowledge and information, but it spreads across planets — books, articles, documentaries, 3D anatomy software, even entertainment movies are a source of knowledge for those learning film-making. But for simplicity, I had to restrict myself to just one planet, and I chose books. This brings us to our actual destination:-

C:\Windows\Properties\Intellectual Property\Copyrights\Books \Economic Rights\

History Time

Note that I have explained the current copyright laws without even mentioning a single fact from history. So let’s get a lesson on history. (I’ll keep it simple. Promise!)

Before the printing press came in wide use, the reproduction of books was done by scribes. Since it was a very tiresome and hectic task, the reproduction of the books remained on a low scale. The wide use of printing press started in the 15th and 16th centuries in Europe. Initially, anyone was allowed to publish any piece of text without any permission. Therefore, new books were quickly republished by different publishers, increasing the output, decreasing book prices; eventually raising literacy rate in Europe.

As printing press helped in mass reproduction of books including religious and educational books, it also helped in the spread of ideas contrary to that of the Government or the Church. To gain control over the production of books, the government invented a licensing system in the 16th century, by which publishers had to obtain license of a book in order to publish it (not from the author but from the government). The license granted the publisher an exclusive right to publish a work, preventing others from producing it. In this way, the government had control over what could be published and what could be not. In return, the publishers were granted monopolies for a specific book. Prices of books increased drastically; low-priced books were replaced with expensive editions.

In 1557, the task of monitoring new books and censoring them was assigned to Stationers’ Company in a Licensing Act (which had to be renewed every two years). Instead of individual publishers, Stationers’ Company was granted the monopoly to publish new works and seize pirated copies. Later on, the company faced much criticism for the censorship, unfair monopoly and the failure to protect authors’ work. As a result of the public protest and the developing political environment, the Parliament refused to renew the act in 1694. There were many attempts by Stationers’ Company to renew the act or replace it with a new similar act, but when all of their attempts failed, they took a different approach.

Stationers’ Company now started advocating for authors’ rights. A pleasant recognition after years of neglect made authors support the idea despite the fact that Stationers’ Company had been exploiting them for years.

“One Man Studies Seven Year, to bring a finish’d Peice into the World, and a Pyrate Printer, Reprints his Copy immediately, and Sells it for a quarter of the Price … these things call for an Act of Parliament”
~ Daniel Defoe (Author of Robinson Crusoe)

This movement along with the confusion created due to absence of any legislation about publishing, led to establishment of The Statute of Anne — the first copyright act — in 1710. For the very first time, the control over printing and reprinting of books was granted to authors instead of a publisher or a company. Its purpose — as stated in the preamble — was “encouragement of learned men to compose and write useful books”.

In the upcoming years, many new acts replaced the former ones with amendments to the technicalities of copyright system but the main ideology of providing authors an incentive to write more was retained throughout.

Two Facets of Copyright:-

At this point, we have acquired sufficient background knowledge about the copyright system which will help us analyze and compare the two different facets of copyright which are:-

The Need of Copyright
The Problems with Copyright

This is where the complex (and interesting) part starts.

The Need of Copyright :-

Copyright laws hold significant importance for all types of content creators including authors. For books to be diverse and widely available, it is necessary that authors from all walks of life write books. However, writing a book, especially a great book, is not that easy. It requires a lot of time, effort, and mental and physical energy to write a book that readers will love reading. Consequently, it can restrict the writing field to only those who have these factors available in abundance. This is where copyright jumps in.

The copyright system guarantees economic rewards to authors so that it can make up for their time, energy, and effort. Copyright laws recognize the work author has created as their intellectual property and give them the exclusive right to financially benefit from it. As a result, anyone can write a book without having to worry about his daily bread. In short, the copyright system gives an incentive to people to write books. It brings those books on shelves which would not have been written otherwise.

In order to give financial benefit to the author, the copyright system limits the publishing capacity of the book which raises its price. It is said that these high prices deprive low-income people of the opportunity to read books. However, it is possible that without guarantee of an economic benefit, the writer would not have written the book in the first place and the whole society would have been deprived of it. Still, the copyright system acknowledges the inequality created by it and addresses it using a set of rules termed as Fair Use.

Fair Use

This topic was supposed to be located above — along with the other technicalities but I believe it fits the purpose better here.

In copyright laws, copyright has some limitations and exceptions where some restrictions imposed by copyright are waived off — meaning that a person is allowed to use copyrighted work in a way which, otherwise, would have resulted in a copyright infringement (violation). These special exceptions are described in a set of rules known as Fair Use or Fair Dealing.

What classifies as fair use and what does not, is a bit vague. Some countries explain only purposes for which fair use is applicable, while some enlist specific use cases. Fair Use generally allows:-

Use or Non-commercial reproduction by libraries, educational institutes, museums, etc. for EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES
Use or Non-commercial reproduction for RESEARCH and PRIVATE STUDY
Use or Non-commercial reproduction for ARCHIVAL PURPOSE
Use or Reproduction of a part of work for CRITICISM and REVIEW
Use or Reproduction in large print or braille for ACCESSIBILITY

(Later in the article, I will try to explain why fair use is not that fair)

The Problems with Copyright:-

A screenshot from website of “the second largest consumer book publisher in the **world**”, which **does not** have a local office or printing-house in a single country in entire Africa.

Knowledge as a luxury

This article was about third-world countries, wasn’t it? This is where things start getting complicated. The current copyright laws are in a sense discrimination of readers in developing countries. International publishers usually do not do agreements with local publishing-houses in such countries, neither do they open local printing-houses, due to unknown reasons. Lower foreign exchange rates in developing countries and prices of books set in high-valued currencies make it impossible to keep book prices under control. The unaffordability of books in developing countries is reassured by costs imposed in the form of tax and duties involved in imports.

When asked about book piracy, an avid book reader from a third-world country expressed the following opinion:

Due to the high prices [of books in my country], there’s a barrier of entry to reading. Even if piracy is wrong, it does remove that barrier of entry and make it possible for people to develop a habit of reading.
People turn to piracy when a) the product they are searching for isn’t available where they’re located, or b) if they could’t afford the product to begin with and would never have purchased it in the first place. By that argument, people who read pirated books would never have purchased the authentic versions in the first place unless the product becomes affordable and available.
As a student, I used to read [pirated] ebooks on a phone or tablet since I couldn’t afford to always buy them but now that I have financial stability, I always buy the originals. I’ve also bought original copies of books I have already read and really enjoyed as keepsakes. If piracy had never been an option, I would have given up on reading all together back then. I probably would have never kept up with this habit and would never have ended up buying more books.

Economic Inefficiency

If we could give a second name to copyright, it would be economic inefficiency. Even though copyright is not a monopoly to be exact, it is still close to it and has the same adverse economic effects. Since only a handful of printers associated with the publisher have the right to print a book, it drastically reduces the copies of books that are published. Due to this shortage, prices rise and less number of people buy these books.

It should not be misunderstood that all these raised prices benefit the author. Instead, this amount is just exhausted in the inefficiency involved. To make this clear, let’s take a simple example. Suppose there is an infinite demand for a book “Hardwork”, whose printing license is given to a publisher “JustPrintIt” by the author. JustPrintIt has a maximum printing capacity of 50,000 books per month and publishes 5 different books, so it can publish at most 10,000 copies of Hardwork per month. Suppose JustPrintIt sells a copy of Hardwork for $17 out of which $3 is the printing cost, $7 is author’s share and $7 is JustPrintIt’s profit. So both the author and JustPrintIt earn $70,000 per month.

Now consider a second case, in which all printers are free to publish or print Hardwork given the condition that they pay $1 to the author for each copy sold. Now, the printing capacity of all printers in the economy for Hardwork is 1,000,000 copies per month 100x the old capacity. Due to greater supply and huge competition, prices will fall down. Let’s suppose the price falls to $5. Given the low price, printers will use innovative ways and lower the printing costs up to $1, and $1 will be the author’s share; so each printer will earn $3 per copy. Hardwork’s great plot and writing style is the reason behind its huge demand, and the lower price will only increase it, but we still suppose that its demand is 100,000 copies per month, 10 times lower than the production capacity. Now take some time and calculate how much the author will earn now. The author will earn $100,000 in this case even though the price of Hardwork has reduced from $17 to just $5. Since, this example is a simplified model, it may not hold true in all cases. The author may earn less in the second case, but the most important thing is that readership of the same book will increase ten fold, causing great benefit to the society, and also increasing its popularity. The higher popularity may even increase its demand in the future, and in the long-run, the author will never be at a loss.

This simple example illustrates how inefficient the copyright system is and how it limits the total welfare to society.

The Loopholes

I have tried to describe both the pros and cons of the system, but it is not that simple. There are many complexities involved — or loopholes, you can call them — which complicate the situation even more. (Don’t worry, I’ll also try to decomplicate it)

Stealing Knowledge?

Piracy is often confused with stealing. While piracy deprives the author of some economic benefit, but still it is a lot different from stealing where there is an explicit loss to the real owner instead of no explicit loss to the author in case of piracy. Someone who has no power to buy an original book, and is reading a pirated book is causing a net benefit to the society overall.

The situation gets even more complicated since people buy pirated books. People actually paying for the book — even though to a pirate instead of the author — shows that they are willing to pay for the book and have no intent of causing financial loss to author. If prices of original books are reasonable (as they are for most readers in developed countries), people in third-world countries would certainly prefer to buy original books.

[Note: According to my limited research, law clearly states that reproducing a copyrighted book without permission is illegal, but it nowhere stated that buying a pirated book is also illegal.]

Fair use is not that fair

Source: Mimi and Eunice —Creative Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

The center of dilemma, the knowledge barrier, has been tried to be resolved using Fair Use, however, it fails to do so. Why? Because it is just an illusion. For research or private study, Fair Use allows you to reproduce a copyrighted book without permission but it doesn’t tell you how you will obtain an original copy for reproduction. If an original copy is not to be found, you can choose to buy a pirated book. This won’t be a copyright infringement since your purpose is research or private study. However, this should be noted that the pirater in this case renders a very important public service by facilitating Fair Use in encouraging a private study. Despite this public service, the pirater is committing an illegal act according to copyright laws. Same is the case for websites like z-library which are providing access to books which are out of print in countries like that of Africa and use of which is allowed by fair use, but in their own violating the law.

If one explores a bit more about the technicalities of Fair Use, it will be discovered that there are so much limitations and restrictions attached to it that it merely creates an illusion of breaking the knowledge barrier, but does not do so actually.

Libraries can’t solve this

You might be surprised to read that libraries aren’t a solution to this issue. Well, they are an effective way to tackle piracy, but they don’t eliminate the root cause of the problem and due to that, building libraries is not the ultimate solution to this problem.

In third-world countries, literacy rate is lower than developed countries, and the reading culture is less developed. Moreover, their governments are facing a very tight budget due to the poor economic condition. So it will not be ideal for such a government to spend their valuable resources on something that is not going to be utilized by much of the population. The non-existence of private libraries is in itself explaining that it is not at all profitable to build libraries in low-income countries due to the small readers’ population.

This is not the only issue with this proposed solution. Few months ago, I moved to a new city, near one of the largest libraries of my country. But to my disappointment, many of the books in my tbr list (to-be-read list) are not to be found in this library. It is not because the library does not have a large collection or is not properly maintained, it is because it is practically impossible for a library to have all the books to satisfy tastes of all the readers.

The Ultimate Solution

Five minutes of brainstorming a solution are much better than hours of fruitless debate.

I have tried to cover all the aspects of copyright laws from all perspectives, and based on these aspects, I have to reach a solution to solve this dilemma. I may not reach the best solution, but I am obliged to at-least try to find it. So here is what I found:

According to World Intellectual Property Organization — WIPO, “copyright law aims to balance the interests of those who create content, with the public interest in having the widest possible access to that content.” The above debate makes it clear that copyright laws fail to achieve this much-needed balance. This should urge us to replace the current copyright system with an alternative compensation system.

The copyright dilemma can be solved by an intelligently crafted compensation system where the monopoly of publisher is abolished while maintaining the financial incentive to the author. The example case of the imaginary book Hardwork demonstrates a simple model of such a solution even though it is far from perfect. To devise such a perfect alternate system is a very difficult and complicated task but is not an impossible one. It will require collaboration of authors, readers, educators, innovators, legal experts and economists who may devise such a system while considering the public interest of all readers including those of economically-challenged countries. A thorough evaluation and re-construction of current copyright laws based on its equity flaws can also prove very fruitful till such a new system is invented.

The most important question with regard to such a system is: where does the money (economic incentive) come from? It can come from readers in form of book price, from publishers as a fraction of their revenue, from companies seeking publicity in form of advertisement (media outlets ranging from news and entertainment channels to YouTube work on same model), from governments in form of funding or grants, from prosperous readers in form of donations, from a source we haven’t thought about yet, or a mix of all these sources.

The Meanwhile Solutions

While a change in the copyright system is an ultimate solution, we should not sit idle till the time it actually happens. There are various other measures that can be taken to lower the impact of copyright barrier on low-income people.

Local Publishing Licenses

More than half of this dilemma can be solved if licenses are granted to local publishers in the low-income countries instead of exporting books to them. The only situation in which exporting is useful is when it costs less to print books in the export-country than the other one. However, in most cases, low-income countries have lower costs of production of books, thus it’s beneficial if books are printed there.

Lending Books

Readers often tend to keep books which they like and would reread in future. Some even store copies of books to maintain a sort of legacy, due to the strong feelings attached to these books. Apart from those few books which one actively needs to revisit and reference, all other books can be lent to persons keen to read them. There is some damage of book with more number of people laying their hands on them, but the benefit produced from it is much greater.

Now consider the more common situation, people also tend to keep those books about which they are sure they would never reread given the scarcity of time and the disinterest with the topic. This is a serious issue which needs to be addressed. So if you have read a book and don’t expect to read it in near-future either lend it or sell it or give it to an interested person for free (but make sure that person is really interested in it).

Promoting Used BookStores

Promoting use of second-hand books is another very effective strategy to combat the unaffordability problem and is also useful to those who afford. A printed copy of a book can be read as long as its condition remains good. If properly handled, one copy of a book is good enough to be read by at-least ten people. So by this method, the price of book is split between ten or more people.

People often see buying and selling used books (instead of giving away) as a sign of being poor or having bad financial condition. Contrarily, both the buying and selling, of used books is very beneficial to the society as it ensures that a person interested in a particular book gets it. The optimal way to support readers who don’t afford original books is to sell your books at a lower price at bookstores and interested people will buy them from there.

For success of this idea, maintaining a constant supply and demand of used books is necessary, which is completely in the hands of book readers, thus the monopoly is no longer retained.

Promoting Libraries and Reading Circles

Regardless of its imperfection, building libraries is a good meanwhile-solution to this issue. While it is not possible for individuals to build high-end libraries on their own, yet it is possible for them to build small libraries in every community. Governments can also try to play whatever role they can play in this regard.

If you find people around you having similar reading-tastes, reading circles can prove very helpful to you. A reading circle can collectively buy a book, and its members can read it by turns.

Wrapping Up

While it is necessary to maintain a financial incentive for authors to continue writing amazing content, it is also essential that we make an impactful effort to curb out the discrimination against readers from third world countries. This is only possible when we understand their situation and accept the injustice of the current copyright system instead of condemning them about piracy because bringing inclusivity in readership is just as important as bringing inclusivity in authorship.

Sources & Further Reading:-