eBooks Drive Older Women To Digital Piracy

Telegraph:

One in eight women over 35 who own such devices admit to having downloaded an unlicensed e-book.

Read the whole story: Telegraph

Comments

[Olderandwiser55]

08:20 PM on 05/18/2011

I don't blame them. The pricing of ebooks is just weird. And I'll bet many pirate by accident. Copyright laws vary so a book may be legal in Australia but not in the US, And us older people bought records and then 8-tracks, cassette tapes, CDs which means we paid that same copyright over and over. Forgive us if we're sick of paying again for the digital copy of a book we owned many times over....

[Max Shaw]

03:59 PM on 05/18/2011

Book are to older woman what mp3's are to the younger generation..makes perfect sense.

Lemme know when older people start pirating things like 'How I Met Your Mother' and 'NCIS' and a bunch of JAG episodes...

[Bklyn Born and Bred]

02:54 PM on 05/18/2011

Older women???? Since when is "over 35" an older woman?? Hmph...

[Seer Clearly]

01:26 PM on 05/18/2011

You can share books. You can share CDs. You can share DVDs. But, if the content is released as data over the Internet and you pay for it, you don't own it (check those agreements you never read!) so you can't share it. This difference is a fundamental gap between how consumers work as social beings, and how big content monopolies want them to work, so there will always be a conflict. As long as content publishers are at war with their audience, their sales will keep dropping. So instead of buying a few congressmen to make stricter anti piracy laws, they can ensure their success by making it easier to share what you love with others, which includes a pricing model more like traditional media and a true ownership model.

[sawyer0413]

12:26 PM on 05/18/2011

Why is this surprising? The current climate for books is built on a sharing model. Starting with libraries and extending to used book stores, re-use and sharing of books is built into the economy. Every time a book is loaned, given, or re-sold at a used book store, the author and publisher gain nothing. So, I don't see this as surprising at all.

What would really be nice is a use-based book policy from publishers. I buy lots of books, physical and e-books. Most of the books I buy, I intend to keep. I fully support the authors and publishers of these titles.

I am waiting for my e-reader to support Library sharing. There are books that I only read once. I wish publishers would recognize this market. As long as publishers refuse to adapt to this change, there will be problems. It is going against the current model without providing any significant benefit for opposing that model.

[Scholastica8]

11:41 AM on 05/18/2011

While I don't own an e-reader or a tablet notebook, I see the situation from both sides. I work in the entertainment industry & my health & pension depends on copyright. However, what purveyors of the new media do not seem to recognize (& this includes the video & music worlds), is that people have always borrowed & loaned books, tapes, records, etc... amongst friends. I loved used book & record stores. One could get lost there & find wonders. One was Indiana Jones searching the long lost temple. I remember buying a set of my favorite Science Fiction novels - 10 books for $1. In the new digital world, those older out-of-print & used books are never discounted.... never old, never out-of-print. Not only is the joy of the search gone, but the so is the ability to own them for $1. Now, that set of 10 books is about $100 from Amazon. To people who are accustomed buying the "used, out-of-print" books at rummage sales, library sales, etc. downloading an unlicensed copy of the same book seems about the same. Why should I pay full price to Amazon, when I could buy the used paperback for 35 cents at used bookshop, if they still existed?