Book piracy: theft or an unavoidable option?

This is not surprising when one take into account that Turkey, as a developing country, has a relatively low per capita income, while book prices are considered to be high, making it difficult for certain segments of society to afford books. For many, the pirated book market is deemed a natural alternative, rather than a violation of copyrights.

“Turkey is a country where reading habits are not yet settled. People fail to perceive the effort that goes into producing a book. That’s why money spent on books looks as if it is too high,” says Deniz Yüce Başarır, editor-in-chief of Doğan Kitap, a publishing house that deals predominantly in best-sellers and is among the top three publishers in Turkey bearing the brunt of the illegal book trade.

Acknowledging the poor economic conditions of the general public, and especially students, she believes that prices could be lowered “only if the publishing sector enjoyed high sales figures and had a sound base.”

But publishers have faced harsh criticism for making “extravagant profits” and leading the path toward book piracy. Strongly denying this contention, Mehmet Varış, editor-in-chief of Kitabevi Publishing House, said, “Not all books are sold successfully, and the losses from these books are being subsidized by the books that sell well.”

According to Varış, book piracy is a really big problem in Turkey. “You can hardly find any original books for sale in provinces other than İstanbul and Ankara,” he said.

According to estimates from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism’s Copyright and Cinema General Directorate, some 40 percent of all books published in Turkey are pirated, including fiction, non-fiction, textbooks, dictionaries and so on. Last year, a total of 353.6 million tax labels were secured from the ministry to affix to books -- which is compulsory to indicate they are legitimate -- bringing the number of books printed without acquiring copyrights to 235.75 million. The revenue the publishing sector loses from the sale of pirated books is estimated to be $300 million, a huge figure considering that the annual turnover of the legitimate book market is about $1 billion.

Furthermore, Turkey has been a regular on the Special 301 Watch List of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) for copyright violations since 1989. The International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) recommended that Turkey remain on the watch list this year.

Lack of awareness of committing ‘theft’

But why is it so hard to put an end to this harmful situation? Ümit Aktaş, an attorney-at-law for the Publishers’ Professional Association (YAYBİR), believes that the most important setback is that people still do not consider the illegal printing of books a crime. “They are not aware that it is theft. Today, you can find lots of pirated books in high school libraries. Illegal photocopying can be carried out freely on campuses of universities,” said Aktaş. Judges also seem to be under the same misapprehension, he believes, which is apparent from the verdicts they issue, which are far from dissuading people from engaging in intellectual property right infringements.

Even though the current Copyright Law stipulates penalties ranging from one to five years’ imprisonment or a fine, courts tend to suspend the sentences of less than two years in prison.

The law should also be amended, he remarked. Book piracy, which is a crime conducted mostly by organizations, should be considered organized crime, according to Aktaş. “This will give us a chance to find clues to break up the whole organization. Otherwise, it’s of no help to just sentence the street vendors; the organization still continues to print.”

Cheaper books a solution

Cem Akaş, from G Publishing Group, agreed that one reason why book piracy has not been wiped out has to do with insufficient enforcement by the state, but he noted that this does not explain why it exists in the first place. According to Akaş, the target groups for pirated and original editions of a book are different. “A ‘zero tolerance’ policy or a ‘crackdown’ on piracy would actually benefit none of the actors involved. The state won’t be better or worse off because it still will not be able to collect the taxes the pirates successfully evade; the publishers of original editions will not be better off because the readers of pirated editions will not start buying their more expensive books -- since if they could, they would have done so when there were no ‘pirates.’ And finally, the publishers and readers of pirated editions will naturally be worse off,” he explained.