Case study: Thieme

Introduction

Founded in 1886, Thieme has become a synonym for high quality and excellence in medical and scientific publishing, both in online and print publishing. Today, Thieme publishes 150 peer-reviewed journals and more than 450 new books annually. The company has a rapidly growing array of web-based products in medicine and science. By making significant long-term investments, Thieme provides easy and widespread global access for the scientific community to digital and print publications protected by copyright. However, the easier and more common access to and use of the internet has become, the bigger the piracy problem. Over the last few years, ebook piracy has grown tremendously. Pirated copies of ebooks are being distributed online for free, sometimes even before the printed copies are released, and in some countries account for 20 percent of all ebook downloads. No publisher is safe from online piracy. The loss of revenue due to online piracy can be tremendous.

Before partnering with Link-Busters, we had tried to protect our quality products and enforce our copyright testing various approaches. On the long term, they all proved to be either impractical or cost prohibitive or even both. We did not have the internal resources to deal effectively with the problem, either. But more importantly, all the measures tested proved to be too slow. Our main concern was the speed factor. We had come to learn that piracy spreads wider and faster, the longer an illegal offering hasn’t been taken down. We also discovered that with some approaches we could only deal with a chunk of the problem. Without our constant input, entire problem sites were either disregarded altogether or dealt with only at a prohibitive extra cost. With the online environment changing and evolving at high speed we also found lack of flexibility to respond to new challenges and of immediate feedback another limiting factor.

When, in 2013, we discovered that under our current solution, again our immediate concerns and some of the biggest threats to our business were not sufficiently dealt with we started to look for a service that truly would take the problem off our hands, 24/7, in every corner of the web.

After evaluating several solutions, we settled on Link-Busters as our anti-piracy service provider. The extensive tests we ran with Link-Busters produced very convincing results. But we were also impressed from the start with Link-Buster’s speed and the way its dynamic team displayed a thorough and professional approach to our distinct piracy problems.

Getting set-up with Link-Busters was very easy. They took the time to listen to what we needed and expected before we got started. Since 2013, we have come to face various new piracy threats for which Link-Busters has proven to be willing and able to think out of the box and provide a quick and effective solution. We especially value that they come back to us immediately with a convincing reply. Communication with authors worrying about piracy has become much easier, as we now can immediately detect from the portal what the current status of a certain illegal link is.

The service we get from Link-Busters is well above the industry’s standard, tailored to our needs. A new edition of one of our beststellers? No need to worry – With a little note to the team along with the bibliographical data we can rest assured that Link-Busters will accompany the launch with top-priority protection. Through partnering with Link-Busters we have freed internal resources and increased the overall visibility of legal versions of our books.