Students Found to Rely on Pirated Textbooks to Save Costs

A study conducted by NetNames has revealed an unlikely source for the bulk of ebook piracy, students. The online security company further revealed that the extent of piracy is even more startling; with no less than 76% of digital content meant for academic use can be downloaded free from pirate sites. NetNames searched for 50 textbooks across 5 disciplines – Medicine, Mathematics, Science, Engineering, and Business – and found 38 to be available from one e-book sharing site completely free. Experts pegged the high rate of piracy as far as academic ebooks are concerned to the high price tag that these typically come for. Some of the ebooks can be priced as high as £80 – £90, which has forced the students to seek other ways to avail of these. The typical mindset at work here is that many of the ebooks will be of use to them for a few months to about a year at the most, which prompts them to seek other alternatives so as not to end up drawing too much from their student finance loan. "It’s something we’ve been talking to publishers about. We talk to all content owners about this sort of thing. The best way to beat piracy is to get your content out there, to give it to people in some way or make them buy it in some simple, cheap, easy way,” David Price, NetNames director of piracy analysis. However, chief executive of Publishers Association, Richard Mollet seems not too concerned of the finding in spite for piracy proving to a major issue in the digital content segment. “About a quarter of all novels bought in the UK are bought as e-books, so as that digital market grows, we’re bound to see a little bit of piracy alongside it. “But I have to say, it’s a very small issue compared with the sort of levels we see in film and music. E-books are nowhere near that,” said Richard Mollet. This is a bitter pill to swallow for companies such as Barnes and Noble, Google and Amazon that spent millions of dollars making their own digital textbook marketplace. Students Found to Rely on Pirated Textbooks to Save Costs is a post from: E-Reader News

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