E-Book Pirates Are Still In Full Force

I haven’t posted anything about e-book pirates in a long time…years. Here’s a post I did in 2010 that got over 62 comments, many of which still amaze me. Some people believe that because they own the print book they deserve a free e-book. I did (and still do) encourage all opinions and I didn’t want to censor anyone, but I did have to take down a few comments there weren’t civil.

Here’s part of one comment…

However, 90% of the books I have downloaded I already owned in paperback or hardback form. The other 10% I bought after I read the book. I carry my computer everywhere and I hate to have to take my favorite books along as well. It’s so much easier to have a copy on my computer. I’d go completely e-book, but I still prefer the sensory experience of holding a book over the electronic way. 

I’m not linking to anything this time, but I’ll post a few short excerpts I’ve read on comment threads recently. The last thing I want to do is link and help promote this kind of illegal activity. I know there are various opinions about this, but I’m not talking about opinions right now.

And it is illegal activity. 

But some don’t seem to care…

i was looking for a way to pirate ebooks. The best wiuld be read them on kindle app for ios, but i don’t know if it is possible, so it would be also nice to download them as pdf/epub and read them on ibooks or orher apps. Which site should i use to find them easily for free?

People gave him links to pirate sites, and here are a few of the replies…

Awesome, dude. You’re the best. FREE e-books. 

Hey man, that’s easier than I thought.

Holy shit I love you! 

I have no idea how this will turn out, because some believe that pirating e-books is a form of book sharing. If you buy a print book, and then loan it out to 10 of your friends, that’s not considered illegal.

Impossible To Stop E-book Pirates

Here’s a piece about e-book piracy that dates back a year, but it’s still very relevant today.

You can check that out here. 

Older Wealthy People Steal E-books

This is about a study done that found older, wealthy people tend to steal e-books more than anyone.

The truth is that, while the average citizen likely can’t speak eloquently about the economic laws at work for digital goods, they certainly can understand them intuitively. And this can be shown with piracy statistics for eBooks, which a recent study shows that eBook pirates tend to be both older and relatively affluent.

This one is a fairly new article. You can read the full findings, here. 

And, to clarify, by “older” they mean people in their 30s and 40s. That seems to be the highest age group stealing e-books, not people older than that.