In follow-up to our research reports on the extent of U.S. newspaper content reuse and online book piracy, we set out to look at infringement of magazines on the web. We were surprised by a number of findings, including the fact that infringement of magazines paralleled that of books, as opposed to newspapers. A majority of magazine piracy is in the form of full-issue downloads as opposed to cut-and-paste text reuse. This is significant for a number of reasons, but the most important is the very fact that magazines are so commonly being hosted and downloaded in their entirety.

Our research looks at a segment of the magazine industry, 133 English language magazine titles, and the infringement that occurs on just 20 of the more than 2,000 domains that illegally host full-issue downloads of these magazines.

Because this report focuses on downloads, and the complete download numbers for these magazine issues are not available, we’re unable to provide the depth of analysis that we wanted. We did not want to make estimations or projections on download numbers, potential views or potential lost revenue without more accurate figures to base it on. We believe there’s more research to be done on magazine piracy and plan to dig deeper into the article-based content reuse in the coming months for a more complete picture of the problem.

That said, it’s important to note that we have not attempted to estimate what it means for the larger industry, but we do believe this research shows that 1) magazine piracy occurs commonly on the Web and 2) it is causing publishers to lose sales.

The research has two parts; first, we look at the entire library of 133 magazine titles and instances of issues available for download, and second, we look at cases of infringement for just the most recent issue, March 2010.

The complete report is below and can be downloaded here.

As part of its ongoing crawling operations, Attributor estimates that there are more than 2,000 domains (cyberlockers and torrents) that host infringing copies of magazines. An infringement is defined as a full-issue copy of a magazine that is available for download.

During a 1-week period in March 2010, Attributor followed the complete library (all issues) of 133 English language magazines on 20 of these infringing sites. (*The sites were selected based on high frequency of infringement found through Attributor’s book service. A complete list of these 20 sites is available upon request.)

• Attributor’s technology verified 3,996 instances of downloadable, full issues of these 133 magazines on these 20 sites.
• 84 of the 133 (63%) magazines had infringements.
• These 84 magazines averaged 48 infringements each.
• The rate of infringement varied by category.

• Top 5 sites contribute 85% of all infringements. Attributor’s research for publications in other languages indicates that while infringements of publications in a particular language tend to be concentrated on a small number of sites, the particular sites vary greatly by language.

Attributor also looked at infringements that occur soon after an issue is published as that presumably has a direct impact on newsstand sales. To shed light on that, Attributor performed a secondary count of only the March 2010 editions of the top 30 infringed magazines in the data reported above.

• An average of 33 infringements was found for these issues.

The details are as follows:

Attributor is not attempting to make any estimate about the total number of illegal downloads that is occurring for these magazines or about the consequent loss in revenue to these magazine publishers with this brief study. Nevertheless, it is clear that magazine piracy occurs commonly on the Internet.