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Despite electronic book (e-book) piracy being viewed by many rightsholders as the greatest contemporary challenge to the publishing industry, there is little research evaluating different anti-piracy methods, and explaining how they work. This paper explores the technological methods that United Kingdom and United States publishers, and their representative bodies, are using to tackle the growing challenge of e-book piracy. Through interviews with industry experts (including consultants, publishers and representatives) and publishing case studies, this paper brings together knowledge previously published and considered separately. The systems considered include The Publishers Association Copyright Infringement Portal, and Digital Rights Management in its various forms. Through these systems, we can reveal a lack of nuanced understanding in the motivations and methods of illegal file sharing, which have led to unsuccessful blanket solutions to a complex problem. By teasing out these problems, this paper will act as a point of reference for current anti-piracy measures, and consider the future options for an industry increasingly using the World Wide Web to distribute content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the role of the open access movement and institutional repositories in eliminating the distinction between non-grey and grey literature. The history of open access can be traced during the time when the U.S. Department of Education made the Education Resources Information Center freely available in 1966. The Budapest Open Archives Initiative, which was convened by the Open Society Institute in 2001, states that the literature that should be freely available online is that which scholars give to the world with no expectation of payment.