The pandemic has caused a significant increase in reading but also in digital piracy, which prevents a proportional development of the publishing market, Quetzalli de la Concha, president of the Mexican Center for the Protection and Promotion of Copyright, said in an interview. According to Cempro data, 48 percent of digital book consumers access them illegally.
Juan Carlos Valdes
If the confinement caused by the pandemic caused a significant increase in the consumption of the cultural offer, this did not go hand in hand with the respect and payment of copyright, said Quetzalli de la Concha, President of the Mexican Center for Protection and Promotion of Copyright, CEMPRO.
“There is a phenomenon of online reading, but this has not had an impact on the market,” explained the intellectual property specialist, who estimates that the publishing industry loses about 12 billion pesos per year due to piracy in Mexico, where four out of every 10 books sold are not original.
“The sale of digital books was not so radical, according to numbers from the Editorial Chamber. Turnover on average grew 2.3 percent. This means that there was an absolute disproportion between the consumption of digital literary content and the acquisition and therefore remuneration of digital copies and this affects authors and publishers ”.
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It is not only about making us aware as users, but about how we affect the rights of authors, said Quetzalli de la Concha. A major risk is that of hackers and cyber security.
“We cannot innocently see the sharing of content because we are directly affecting the author and the publisher and on the other hand there are the real digital pirates who open sites on the internet specifically to upload content that obviously are not authorized by the authors, of course not They pay them a penny for the use and exploitation of their works. Entering these sites implies very important risks ”, explained the specialist
Member of the writing team of the Reform of the Federal Copyright Law, Quetzalli de la Concha states that they are currently working on compensatory remuneration for private copying.
“While more technologies are being developed to communicate, to reproduce and to use creative content, it happens that there is no proportional growth in remuneration for authors. This initiative that is being analyzed and is being promoted in the Chamber of Deputies is precisely the compensatory remuneration for private copy of the commercial value of any device that allows us to use reproduction, a part should be allocated to the authors. It is not only a balance but also a sense of justice ”
An important piece of information provided by the Centro Mexicano de Protección y Fomento al Derecho de Autor is that 48 percent of digital book consumers access them illegally.
Last November, when announcing the statistics of the publishing industry, Alejandro Ramírez, director of the National Chamber of the Mexican Editorial Industry, reported that until that moment there had been a drop of 9,887 million pesos in the billing of books to the public as well as a 36 percent decrease in the personnel working in this industry due to the pandemic.
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