Lucía Pastor: «Piracy is a scourge for the publishing industry»

We spoke with Lucía Pastor, director of CEDRO’s Anti-Piracy Department, after having removed more than 900,000 links to pirated copies of books, magazines, newspapers, and sheet music from our partner authors and publishers.

Could you tell us about the Digital Anti-Piracy Service that CEDRO now offers?

CEDRO launched the Digital Anti-Piracy Service, SAD, in 2019. It is a technological solution that protects the new publications of our partner’s authors and publishers from piracy on the Internet automatically, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. With SAD, we detect these pirated works and request their removal from websites, social networks, and messaging services.

How exactly does it work? How can you locate infringing links?

Through SAD we automatically, comprehensively, and constantly track pirate domains on the Internet. These domains are fed with reports and evidence from our partners through the services we make available to them in our digital ecosystem.

What is the difference between SAD and SAD express?

SAD express is a section of SAD that specializes in detecting and requesting the removal of pirated files from newspapers and magazines, taking into account their main characteristic, which is immediacy, their rapid expiration.

«The number of pirated contents of books, magazines, newspapers and sheet music increased 4.48 % in 2020.»

With this program, many publishers are protected, what are the implications for them?

Piracy is a scourge for the publishing industry, both for authors and publishers. The number of pirated content of books, magazines, newspapers, and sheet music increased by 4.48% in 2020. According to figures from the latest Observatory on Piracy and Digital Content Consumption Habits, this cost the publishing industry more than €1 billion in lost profits. Piracy has a direct impact on the legal supply of content.

Publishers and CEDRO’s partners can access this service, how can they use and understand it?

Members authors and publishers can see the situation of their works, those that have been pirated, in CEDRO’s Members’ Area, in the Services section.

There is a complaints channel available to members. What is the success rate of the members’ complaints about those of their employees?

They are different but complementary services. Through ODS, an automatic follow-up is applied, while members can also inform us, through the complaints channel, of specific illegal activities in which their works are pirate. We try to respond quickly. This year, for example, we have received some 2,300 complaints, and we have resolved 92% of them.

In addition, another of the services to fight piracy that we make available to our member authors and publishers is SEA, Anti-Piracy Evidence Service, an application through which they can communicate evidence (photos, videos, etc.) of activities that may be infringing their intellectual property rights, which is part of the digital ecosystem that CEDRO has developed to improve efficiency in the fight against piracy and the management of copyrights.

«Through SAD an automatic monitoring is applied, while members can also inform us, through the complaints channel, of specific illegal activities in which their works are pirated».

You are not only looking for digital books but also audiobooks, what is the percentage difference between one website and another?

We have integrated into SAD, in recent months, the detection of illicit reading recordings that are carried out on the Internet without the necessary authorization. In other words, a person picks up a book and reads it in front of a camera in front of a computer.

It is a relatively recent service and we are still working to improve its operation, so we cannot compare results at the moment. However, we are happy, as since its launch we have detected more than 4,100 links that made these recordings illegally available to Internet users.

«In recent years we have seen an increase in the piracy of these contents on social networks and messaging channels precisely because they are files that are easy to share through these channels.»

Why do you think users consume digitized works in a pirated form? Are many people unaware that they are violating a right? There are more and more digital platforms that offer content at a very competitive subscription price (not to mention both physical and digital libraries). So why movies and series yes and books no?

Written works, whether a book, a newspaper, a magazine, or a score, unlike audiovisual works, are files that weigh little. In recent years we have seen an increase in the piracy of these contents on social networks and messaging channels precisely because they are files that are easy to share through these channels.

It is also true that there is a lack of information and training on intellectual property. From CEDRO we have several projects aimed at transmitting the value of copyright to society, such as webinars aimed at our partner’s authors and publishers or companies and organizations. We also work with the educational world with our program Es de libro, which has the collaboration of the Ministry of Culture and Sports and the Ministry of Culture of the Community of Madrid, aimed at students of ESO and high school; and through the organization of online workshops for teachers of primary and secondary education on this subject, for which we have the support of NBC Universal and that we execute through the Ministries of Education.