Anti-Piracy Program

Types of Piracy in Overseas Markets

Problems Faced by the Publishing Industry

Piracy of copyrighted materials is a worldwide problem that costs American publishing industry well over $500 million a year. Below, we have highlighted a few specific problems American publishers currently face overseas.

Illegal Commercial Photocopying

• Hundreds of commercial copy centers, in the form of traditional photocopy shops, wholly illicit operations set up in residential areas and made-to-order operations run in underground warehouses, copy entire textbooks on a routine basis. These activities are taking place in and around all major university campuses in most territories that AAP monitors.
• Commercial copying, regardless of venue, is often undertaken on a “print to order” basis, to avoid stockpiling. Orders from students are printed immediately and distributed around campuses using vans or similar delivery vehicles.
• Technology has made it possible to produce photocopies with scanned digital covers that look virtually identical to the legitimate goods.
• Pirates are also using cameras and similar devices to monitor law enforcement movement outside their facilities.

Print Piracy

• In some cases, wholly unauthorized operations obtain masters or copies of books and run unauthorized editions off a printing press.
• In other cases, licensed local distributors or publishers undertake print overruns, meaning that they print more copies of a title than permitted by the license granted to them, and sell the extra copies at a profit.

Digital / Electronic Piracy

• Publishing companies face increasing numbers of illegal downloads of online journals.
• Unauthorized digitization of collections by libraries, and unchecked sharing of such digitized versions of works, is on the rise as well.

AAP engages foreign governments in efforts to foster more widespread and sustained enforcement efforts against commercial photocopying centers, illegal or unauthorized printing and digital piracy, including cooperation from university officials in undertaking enforcement efforts and copyright awareness activities on campuses.