As more and more digital content becomes available, the concerns about the impact of free content, piracy, and the ability or inability to protect content grows. How might digital piracy affect print sales? Does free content cause sales in any format to grow or decline? In 2008, Magellan Media began monitoring file sharing of O’Reilly Media titles on peer-to-peer sites to determine its impact on paid content sales. The research has revealed a possible positive correlation between piracy and paid sales. Brian O'Leary's presentation will detail the latest findings that include 2009 updates for O'Reilly and Random titles as well as Thomas Nelson, a 2009 participant.

1. The impact of piracy on paid content sales ECPA Executive Leadership Summit May 4, 2010

4. “ Perhaps on the rare occasion that pursuing the right course demands an act of piracy, piracy itself can be the right course?” Governor Swann, in “Pirates of the Caribbean” (itself pirated)

6. Why look at this topic now?

7. An evolving file-sharing landscape Centralized servers Decentralized Multiple sources

8. BitTorrent terms and tools Term Explanation Content files The original document (e.g., a movie, an e-book) Torrent files A collection of fragments (hashes) made from a content file, typically created using a BitTorrent client Indexes A directory of the fragments (hashes) required to make up a complete file Trackers Services that point to users with one or more fragments (declining in use) Client software A web interface that adheres to the BitTorrent protocol; used to create, search, download or stream .torrent files Seeds Sources of .torrent fragments Leeches Recipients of .torrent fragments; can become seeds when they receive a complete file

9. How BitTorrent file sharing works

11. The current sample set The data provided here reflects results through April 2010. O’Reilly Media Have been measuring the impact on front-list sales since fall 2008 Monitored BitTorrent sites; only PirateBay had more than a handful of O’Reilly titles posted Tracked activity of seeds (uploads) and leeches (downloads) for any 2008 O’Reilly front list titles found on these sites Thomas Nelson Began working with Thomas Nelson’s fall 2009 list in August 2009 To dates, no fall 2009 titles have appeared on monitored sites Lag time for Thomas Nelson titles may be longer than for O’Reilly

13. The number of seeds peaks quickly

14. Leeches peak quickly and then decline

15. Lag time before seeding varies Average = 19 weeks

17. Average sales (weeks after pub date) Average week at which seeded content first seen Unreliably small sample sets

18. Average sales (weeks after pub date) Average week at which seeded content first seen Unreliably small sample sets

19. Average sales (weeks after pub date) Average week at which seeded content first seen Unreliably small sample sets +108%

20. Four-week rolling averages Average week at which seeded content first seen Unreliably small sample sets

25. A pirate-site example

26. Legitimate alternatives exist

27. Traffic is low, but cyclical

34. “ Information wants to be free. Information also wants to be expensive. Information wants to be free because it has become so cheap to distribute, copy and recombine – too cheap to meter. It wants to be expensive because it can be immeasurably valuable to the recipient. That tension will not go away. It leads to endless, wrenching debate about price, copyright, intellectual property, the moral rightness of casual distribution , because each round of new devices makes the tension worse, not better.” -- Stewart Brand (1984)