Digimac Coporation, a US based company, believe that they have created a solution for e-book piracy with their product Digimarc Guardian. Digimarc Guardian disrupts the piracy chain through a number of methods, including embedding “unique, imperceptible and traceable digital watermarks into e-books in near real-time” (Digimarc (a), 2014). Many publishers, both book and magazine are already buying into this scheme including Random House and Oxford University Press. HarperCollins’ United States division has also recently joined in the war against piracy, with Chantal Resitvo-Alessi, the chief digital officer stating that the technology will aid them in their protection of authors’ content (Farrington, 2014).
The service can be integrated into e-books in ePub, PDF and Mobi formats, meaning that most digital files purchased from these publishers can be tracked 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and unlike digital rights management solutions, if watermarked content is found online in places that it should not be, Digimarc work alongside search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing to get these sites ‘de-listed’ (Digimarc (b), 2014).
Barron, G., 2014. Greg Barron. [Online]
Available at: http://gregbarron.com/resources/ebook-piracy-a-writers-perspective/
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Digimarc, 2014. Digimarc (a). [Online]
Available at: http://www.digimarc.com/docs/default-source/digimarc-guardian/digimarc-guardian-watermarking.pdf?sfvrsn=10
[Accessed 10 October 2014].
Digimarc, 2014. Digimarc (b). [Online]
Available at: http://www.digimarc.com/products/guardian
[Accessed 10 October 2014].
Farrington, J., 2014. The Bookseller. [Online]
Available at: http://www.thebookseller.com/news/watermarks-e-books-hc-us?destination=node/276656
[Accessed 10 October 2014].
Hall, F., 2013. The Business of Digital Publishing. 1st ed. Abingdon: Routledge.