Piracy and Digital Rights Management: 10 Ways to Combat Online Piracy

3. Join Forces With Other Publishers

Pirates don't discriminate. If they are pirating your publications you can be sure they are pirating the publications of others as well. It can be beneficial to get together with like-minded publishers either through a trade association such as SIIA, or on your own, to share information about websites and other protocols that present the biggest piracy problems, and to share tips on what strategies and solutions have worked best.

4. Proactively Monitor The Internet

Even if you don't take any action, it's helpful to know whether and how others are making pirated copies of your publications available online. Using an online monitoring service like MarkMonitor or Attributor can be useful to collect intelligence about the extent of your piracy problem. If you can't or don't want to employ a monitoring service, you can also obtain valuable information by simply having one of your employees use a search engine to scour the Internet for your products to see where they pop up and what people are doing with them—illegally or otherwise.

5. Develop An Effective Enforcement Strategy

If you're like most publishers, you're likely to find that there is more piracy occurring than you have the ability to address. This is where having an effective enforcement strategy comes into play. It's important to develop an enforcement strategy that prioritizes your company's biggest problems. For example, you may want to prioritize taking enforcement action against piracy on the more popular websites, in countries with better copyright laws and enforcement records and/or piracy taking place on sites where the pirated copies are being sold (as opposed to those where they are being made available for free).

6. Develop A Working Relationship With Government Agencies And Intermediaries

Even the most aggressive copyright owners need help enforcing their rights. Because pirates are continuously devising new ways to engage in piracy and to avoid detection, it is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, for publishers to combat this piracy alone. The best way to effectively address online piracy problems is through the cooperation of multiple stakeholders, including the Federal, state and local government agencies that are responsible for enforcement. It is likewise important to have contacts at the various payment processors (e.g., PayPal, Visa), ecommerce sites (e.g., Amazon, eBay, Craigslist), search engines and other intermediaries who can help you combat the piracy when their services are involved. This is especially true when piracy is taking place abroad in countries where civil and criminal actions are likely to be ineffective.