At the O’Reilly Tools of Change conference last week in New York, Paperight’s Arthur Attwell and Worldreader’s Michael Smith outlined several companies’ efforts to bring new ways of reading to developing countries. Here’s a brief introduction to each of those companies.

Paperight

Arthur Attwell worked in educational and scholarly publishing in South Africa for several years while cofounding and running a digital publishing company called Electric Book Works. But, he said, “The more I worked in ebooks, I found that I was essentially making ebooks for rich people. I didn’t think that was a very interesting challenge.” South Africa’s digital publishing market, he said, is supported by just one or two million wealthy people; the country’s remaining 48 million residents can’t afford it.

Digital wasn’t the solution for Attwell: The most recent South African census found that 65 percent of the country’s residents have no internet access at all. But, Attwell said, every South African village, town and city has at least one “photocopy shop” with copy machines and those buildings usually have internet access. His company Paperight, launched in May 2012, takes advantage of those shops to distribute books. A store registers on Paperight.com, opens a prepaid account of credits and instantly gets the legal right to download and print books for their customers. Over 200 South African shops, as well as a few in other African countries, are now using Paperight.

Worldreader

Worldreader, an NGO I’ve covered in the past, gives Kindles to students in sub-Saharan Africa and has become increasingly well-known in part because of its partnership with Amazon. (CEO David Risher was previously an Amazon executive.) The company has distributed 428,000 ebooks to 3,000 kids as of January 2013.

Worldreader is now pushing forward with reading on basic mobile phones. An app called biNu lets users download Worldreader books (and other content — including Facebook) over a basic feature phone’s data signal. biNu is now enabled on 5 million subscriber phones, primarily in Nigeria. (The top five book searches, Worldreader’s Smith said, were “sex,” “romance,” “the Bible,” “Harry Potter” and “physics.”) Worldreader is also working with students to self-publish their own writing on Amazon’s KDP platform.

Right now, Worldreader is tied to Kindle. Smith said the company is “definitely looking to get beyond” it, but right now Kindle is the only e-reader that supports 3G. And in many countries where Worldreader operates, internet access isn’t easily available. Smith said Worldreader also needs Amazon’s Whispercast technology to push books onto devices, and other e-reading companies don’t yet have that system in place.

Mxit and Siyavula

Mxit is a social network for mobile phones, with about 50 million users across the African continent. The network relies primarily on instant messaging but also allows access to other kinds of content — including books. One of the first books distributed on Mxit’s platform in 2009 was a novella called “Kontax.” Aimed at teens and available in both English and Xhosa (one of South Africa’s official languages), the book was distributed in parts, allowing readers to discuss it as unfolded. “Kontax” was read 34,000 times, and Yoza, the initiative behind it, has expanded to offer more cell phone novels (which it calls m-novels).

Now, the South African open-source creative commons textbook publisher Siyavula is distributing free math and science textbooks on Mxit. (Attwell’s Shuttleworth Foundation is a backer of Siyavula.) In 2010, following teacher strikes, the South African government arranged to print copies of Siyavula’s textbooks and distribute them to high school students. As a result, over 200,000 South African students have read Siyavula’s content. Now corporations are sponsoring books in new subjects and for younger students.

Michael Smith, an economist from Carnegie Mellon, is one person who doesn’t buy the “pirates always win” meme. At a legal seminar in New York last week, Smith pointed to empirical data that paints a more nuanced picture of the piracy situation. He also called out “three myths” he says are clouding the debate:

Myth #1: You can’t compete with free

This myth is often invoked by content owners to justify heavy-handed enforcement measures against piracy sites and individual consumers. After all, why buy a song or movie when you can simply download it for free at a pirate site?

A quick look at the thriving content markets at Amazon, iTunes and elsewhere shows this notion is bunk. All of these sites are competing with free very successfully. As Smith points out, the lowest cost (including free) is not the only determinant of consumer purchases. Factors like reliability, convenience, service and quality also have a very big impact on how we buy content online.

The point here is that paid sites can thrive without snuffing out every single piracy site.

Myth #2: Piracy doesn’t harm sales

This myth holds that that people who use content-sharing (“stealing” if you prefer) sites will never pay for the content in the first place so what’s the harm? Meanwhile, “honest” consumers will never turn to piracy.

Smith pointed to evidence that piracy sites are not benign. In one prominent example, he said that when NBC removed shows from on-demand site Hulu, piracy spiked not only for NBC shows but for other networks as well. Meanwhile, no one went out and bought DVD’s as a substitute for the shows that were no longer available on Hulu.

The bottom line is that piracy sites do affect the market for authorized content.

Myth #3: Anti-piracy initiatives don’t work

Laws that target file-sharing are reviled not just as oppressive — but as ineffective too. The first part of the claim is debatable but the second part is blatantly untrue.

Smith points to a recent study of France’s HADOPI (a new enforcement regime) to argue that anti-piracy laws do work. He noted that the advent of HADOPI coincided with a big rise in legal online music purchases, particularly in genres like rap and hip-hop that experience high rates of piracy. At the same time, much of this increases took place before the law even went into effect; it appears that news about the law caused people to seek out legal alternatives.

The point is that laws like HADOPI (and presumably America’s impending “6-strikes” initiatives) can provide a clear deterrent to piracy. (Whether America can implement a sensible one is up to Congress to figure out.)

So what’s the moral of the story?

People like Smith are not making bold new arguments — they’re simply showing how the piracy debate is still driven by ideology not facts. Both sides in the debate are to blame. On one hand, apologists for illicit file-sharing sites pretend that piracy is inconsequential or inevitable. And on the other, content owners too often rely on lies and fear to protect outdated business models.

Internet pirates don’t always win. And neither do content owners. It’s a complicated back and forth we have yet to figure out.

• See also: Piracy may be commonplace but music’s outlook is improving

Smith spoke at NARM’s Entertainment and Technology Law Conference.

Smith will keep his current operating responsibilities as president of Forbes.com As he takes on the added duties of CDO, Smith will also be tasked with reorganizing of all Forbes IT departments which include IT Systems, Multi-Platform Development and Digital Strategy. Smith will report directly to Scott Masterson, Forbes Media’s SVP/GM.

Among his other duties, Smith will run the Forbes Media Exchange, the company’s ad bidding platform, As Masterson said in a statement, “Mike has initiated many products while at Forbes but none with more potential than FMX”.

Before taking on the Forbes.com CTO post, Smith was VP and chief information officer at TheStreet.com (NSDQ: TSCM). He’s also worked at HBO in a variety of positions, including director of Information Technology.

Since last spring, Forbes has been working to overhaul its digital and edit sides. In May, Forbes acquired the freelance aggregation site True/Slant and brought in its founder and former Forbes editor Lewis D’Vorkin to run content strategy.

Remains to be seen if he will also be responsible for the revenue side, or the overall president of the media company, when appointed, will take over that responsibility.