International publisher alliance shuts down piracy site-gctid52425

[Ɔbenfo Ọbádélé]

                                                                                                          International publisher alliance shuts down piracy site                                    15.02.12              | Katie Allen

An international alliance of publishers, including Cambridge University  Press, Elsevier and Pearson Education Ltd, has served successful  cease-and-desist orders on a piracy operation with an estimated turnover  of £7m.
    The two platforms, sharehoster service www.ifile.it and link library www.library.nu,  had together created an "internet library" making more than 400,000  e-books available as free illegal downloads. The operators generated an  estimated turnover of €8m (£6.7m) through advertising, donations and  sales of premium-level accounts, according to a report by German law  firm Lausen which helped co-ordinate the alliance.
    The other publishers involved also comprised Georg Thieme;  HarperCollins; Hogrefe; Macmillan Publishers Ltd; Cengage Learning; John  Wiley & Sons;the McGraw-Hill Companies; Pearson Education Inc;  Oxford University Press; Springer; Taylor & Francis; C H Beck; and  Walter De Gruyter. The alliance was also co-ordinated by the German  Publishers and Booksellers Association (Börsenverein) and the  International Publishers Association (IPA),
    Jens Bammel, secretary general of the IPA, said: "Today, the  international book industry has shown that it continues to stand up  against organised copyright crime.
    "We will not tolerate freeloaders who make unjustified profits by  depriving authors and publishers of their due reward. This is an  important step towards a more transparent, honest and fair trade of  digital content on the Internet," he said.
    Alexander Skipis, Börsenverein c.e.o., added: "This case  demonstrates, in particular in the context of current debates, that  systematic copyright infringement has developed into a highly criminal  and lucrative business."
    
       Trackback URL for this post:    http://www.thebookseller.com/trackback/105916