Rampant piracy hammering global e-book market

Piracy has spread from comics and music to e-books. As about 20 percent of e-books are downloaded via piracy websites, related industries such as Amazon are feeling the heat, the British newspaper Daily Mail said Sunday.

Pirated versions are circulating even before e-books are officially released on the market. Amazon is taking reservations for the e-version of “77 Shadow Street,” a new release by American sci-fi novelist Dean Koontz for 12 pounds (about 19 U.S. dollars), but e-book and audio book versions of the work are available on pirate websites.

Amazon takes 30 percent of what users of Kindle Fire, its tablet PC, pay when they download e-books. The publishing industry has demanded that Google remove links to pirate sites from the rankings of Google search or pressure authorities to shut down such sites.

Pirated versions are rampant because of the ease of reproduction by simply scanning books with a scanner. On the other hand, consumers are complaining about the prices of e-books that are set higher than those of print versions.

journari@donga.com