E-book piracy is a billion dollar business, and a good percentage of it comes from user-generated shared files. Pirate websites list millions of these files, enabling visitors to download music, movies, pictures, and e-book texts that their Internet peers are sharing, all free. As E-Reads’ Michael Gaudet pointed out in his analysis of e-book piracy, “Most of the listed files are ripped from purchased media, and in some cases they are leaked material that has yet to be made available at retail.”

Though the operators of pirate websites are cagey and some are downright defiant, a recent Swedish court decision found four co-founders of one such site, Pirate Bay, guilty of being accessories to copyright infringement. The perpetrators have each been sentenced to 1 year in prison and fined $3.5 million ($14m total).

While copyright owners rejoice in the decision, their happiness may be short-lived, for there are numerous websites ready to take Pirate Bay’s place. If the beast grows ten more heads, legitimate publishers may be forced to seek other measures. One of them is to sue visitors to these sites who download shared files. People like, um…you?

Surely, no book publisher is going to sue some kid for sharing an e-book file, right? Well…

Consider the case of one Patricia Santangelo of Wappingers Falls, N. Y. It happens that four years ago she was one of thousands of people accused of illegally downloading and distributing music. They were sued by the Recording Industry Association in a bid to make an example of ordinary people whose file-sharing activities were draining publishers and recording artists of legitimate, copyright-protected revenue. The plaintiffs didn’t care how much it cost to bring the action – that’s how much it meant to them.

Many of those sued settled, but Ms. Santangelo decided to fight it out in court. According to the New York Times, “The industry eventually dropped its suit against the mother. But it filed a new one against two of her children, Michelle and Robert, ages 20 and 16 at the time.” Just recently her family and the recording industry reached a settlement, and it will cost the Santangelos $7,000. They have denied wrongdoing.

So we ask again: can a book publisher or association of publishers sue participants downloading texts from an e-book file sharing site? The answer is – sure. Would a judge throw the suit out as frivolous? Not if he or she bought into the arguments of such righteously indignant copyright owners as the victim who recently posted a blog asserting that piracy was no better than mugging or shoplifting.

See you in court.

RC