Head of the Ukrainian Book Association (UBA) Artem Bidenko states that an appeal from the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine is necessary for Google to start helping fight book piracy in Ukraine.
"This is a subjective assessment based on what is called a shelf test. In fact, a third of what we see online is illegal products. This applies to paper books, audiobooks, and electronic versions. Roughly speaking, you go to a marketplace, enter the title of a popular book, say, Stephen King, and you see where it is Kharkiv Book Club) and where the cover does not contain the publisher’s name at all. In addition, we see that when you type the title of a popular book into Google, it shows various stores, and even by the prices you can understand where the fake is. There are really many of them, we see this, and that is why we raised such a fuss," Bidenko said in an exclusive interview with the Interfax-Ukraine agency, commenting on the level of book piracy in Ukraine.
He noted that fighting e-book piracy under Ukrainian legislation is quite difficult, while at the same time, there are a lot of paper pirated copies of official books, and this is the key problem today.
"We see that one of the key piracy problems in Ukraine is Google search results, because the search engine shows illegal content. With marketplaces, in particular Rozetka, Prom, and OLX, we work in a format where when we see such links, we send them, and they block them immediately. Unfortunately, this does not happen with Google. Although Google has had a strategy to fight piracy since 2018 and has a complaint form that allows blocking certain links, in practice it works very slowly for everyone, especially in Ukraine. I personally submitted two complaints in February to check how it works, and received a response from Google only in June," he said.
In his opinion, if Google starts acting regarding books according to their strategy and chooses trusted platforms for Ukraine – which could be an industry association, a ministry, or some other structure – then these platforms will get the opportunity through their form to block not just links, but the resources themselves, and this could get the piracy situation moving.
Bidenko stated that the UBA approached Google in Ukraine about this, but they said they only work with ministries and a corresponding appeal from them is required for this.
"We wrote letters to the Ministry of Culture and received a response from the relevant deputy minister Bohdana Laiuk: ‘We understand everything, we are doing a lot, thank you, goodbye.’ I do not understand this. Here is a thing for which government funds are not needed. You just need to write a letter to Google, agree on this platform – and everyone will win. Moreover, there are no objections from Google: this is their strategy, and there are no difficulties with implementation," he added.
The head of the association noted that at the same time, both the Ukrainian Book Institute (UBI) and the Ukrainian National Office of Intellectual Property support the UBA in this work.
As reported, at the end of 2025, bookstore owners and publishers predicted a crisis in the industry and noted that they were looking for ways to mitigate threats; among the proposed solutions were state support, intersectoral dialogue, a law on a single price, and the fight against piracy.
In April, head of the Ukrainian Book Association (UBA) Artem Bidenko stated that almost a third of the book market consists of pirated editions, and most of them are sold through marketplaces and websites.
The Ukrainian Book Institute (UBI) and the UBA propose to create a coalition of honest sellers and publishers and introduce special marking of legal resources to fight book piracy.
Laiuk believes that piracy is a major cultural problem, and Ukraine needs a full-scale market study to understand the level of piracy and its impact on the sphere.
