A Passage to India

Ken McGuffin, manager of media relations at the Rotman School of Management, emailed me today to say that he’s in Mumbai and saw my BlackBerry book on the shelves in the several bookstores he visited. “Unfortunately,” he quipped, “you’re not a hit here until the guy on the sidewalk selling the counterfeit books is selling it as well.”

I take his point. BlackBerry is about to go on sale in China. I have this nightmare that one copy is sold and then the rest are pirated. In fact, such activity is already happening right here in North America. There’s a site where you pay $29.99 for a lifetime subscription to download unlimited music, movies and books. BlackBerry: The Inside Story of Research In Motion is available; more than 12,000 people have downloaded this digital edition. This is what happened to music beginning around 2000 with Napster. As a result, CD sales are down more than 50 per cent. Books are headed for the same slippery downloading slope with authors receiving nothing for their hard work.

Tell you the name of the site? Are you kidding?