A good book, in the language of the book-sellers is a salable one; in that of the curious, a scarce one; in that of men of sense, a useful and instructive one. —Chambers Books are the treasures of wisdom and are the legacies that genius men leave for the generations to come. In the words of Milton, ‘A good book is the precious life blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose for a life beyond’. The creator of books is quite often robbed of the material return of his valuable work by book pirates.
To protect the creators or authors of the book work, in the year 1710, the first law on copyright came into existence in England. The law was known as ‘Queen Anne’s Statute’, which provided authors with right to reprint their books for a certain number of years. Subsequently, a new enactment namely, ‘Engravers Act’ came into being in the year 1735, which included the interests of other creative works such as paintings, drawings, translation and dramatisation, etc. There followed a few more enactments and finally copyright Act, 1911, was enacted. After the independence, Indian Copyright Act, 1958, was enacted, which was repeatedly amended in 1983, 1984 and 1994, to keep apace with the contemporary technological developments. The present law is in full conformity with the Uruguay Round Agreement on Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs).

However, despite all the above legislations, piracy is in full swing. The fact remains that simply by making laws the situation cannot be averted. Book piracy in India primarily depends on two factors viz. the price of the book and its popularity. Piracy is generally wide spread with foreign books and Indian books having large demands. A study conducted by Ministry of HRD, Government of India indicates that three types of print piracy are prevalent in our country. The most prevalent one is reprinting a book illegally; the second category involves the phenomenon of publishing books, falsely using the name of famous authors, which in fact was authored by imitators; and the third category of pirated book is to produce the translated versions of foreign-language books in other languages. The pirates do not pay taxes on the huge money generated through this illegal activity and they are also not liable to pay any royalty to the author.
Book piracy today has become very easy with the use of new technologies. The offender for illegally reprinting a book needs only two copies of the original, a scanner, a computer with optical recognition programme and a small rotary press. With this technique, multiple copies of the pirated books can be produced in a few days. Amazingly, pirated books also print the warning as ‘reproduction is forbidden’.
The culprits, who are well organized, do the imitation with entire expertise to the extent that at times the authors and publishers cannot distinguish between the original and the fake ones; as not only is the text copied but the design, cover, colour and the bar code are also copied.
The copyright piracy besides adversely affecting the creative potential of the authors by denying their legitimate dues, has also largely been impacting economically upon the publishers and booksellers who invest their money in bringing out copyrighted materials for the benefit of the endusers. In developed countries, the publishing and allied industries such as audio cassettes / CD industry, film and video industry and computer software industry, etc; handsomely contribute to the state exchequers. The contribution of copyright based industries in countries like USA, UK, Sweden, Germany and Australia is significantly high. However, in India, there is no reliable data to indicate the contribution of this industry to GDP; although, it is firmly assumed that this sector is quite important in terms of economic contribution of the country. By the same way, there is also no significant data available to give an account of the losses arising out of copyright piracy.
In addition to the above, book piracy in the form of mass photocopying is also prevalent in India, especially around the schools, colleges and universities. As the result of this, publishers cannot sell books in desired numbers, especially the text books. Most pirated books are expensive college books on subjects such as engineering and medicine.
Medical students are believed to largely depend on photocopies of books, as most of the medical books are authored and published in foreign countries and are therefore very expensive and students do not have the monetary capacity for buying these exorbitantly priced books. Corporate groups and NGOs should be encouraged to adopt

“ To counter piracy a multi-pronged strategy has to be devised; in which the respective regulatory authorities should be requested to direct the colleges to stock large number of books in college libraries. ”

libraries of the educational institutes and book-grant to them. The University Grants Commission (UGC) should be requested to not only grant adequate funds for purchase of books but should also ensure that the funds so granted under ‘books’ head are properly used in the given time frame. For example, according to the reported news, the UGC between 2012 and 2017, had sanctioned an amount of Rs 300 crore to Delhi University under different heads but the university had to return Rs108 crore to UGC because it was unable to spend it. The UGC disbursed Rs 3 crore to buy books for the libraries, but having missed the 15 March 2017 deadline, Delhi University had to return this fund as well to the Commission.
Another way of discouraging book piracy is for the government to encourage book publishing by giving publishers handsome concessions in all types of taxes. Publishers should be given subsidies for printing the university, college and school level books with consequent reduction in book prices. Such a strategy will on one side encourage readers to purchase books instead of photocopying and on the other hand will catalyse increased production and profit for publishers. The public libraries should also be given more grants for purchase of books, especially which are more in demand. Commercial advertisements may also be included to curtail the cost of production.
Eliminating book piracy is not an easy job. To counter such a situation, the trade bodies have to work in tandem with all governmental agencies concerned including the police for identifying, nabbing the offenders and preventing the piracy.