Digital Domain - Will Piracy Become a Problem for E-Books?

I think the publishing industry is in a much better place to encourage licensed use of their work than the music industry was. Look at the kindle and how simple and easy it is to grab a book. Imagine if an ipod could do that in 1999.

Will it become a problem??? It already is:<p><a href="http://www.google.co.in/search?q=the%20lost%20symbol%20rapidshare.com&#38;ie=utf-8&#38;oe=utf-8&#38;aq=t&#38;rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&#38;client=firefox-a" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.co.in/search?q=the%20lost%20symbol%20rapid...</a>

Yes. Books are "barely" pirated now because it is impossible to find most books from pirate sources. Hell, it's hard to find most books from legitimate sources online.<p>Books have an advantage on other media in that they are traditionally physical and their quality (when they are presented in a quality form) will still help sell them.<p>Having said that, the day someone manages to release a way (iphone app?) of letting you scan books easily (for book authors but lets not pretend it won't get used both ways) will be pretty awesome.

Piracy isn't a problem, it's a result - the question is so uninteresting... The more interesting question is the question of how can we make a better business model for publishers/authors

I notice that they didn't compare ebooks to movies. I'm sure the MPAA would have issued the same scary stats, but the film industry is rolling in cash despite entire criminal industries dedicated to stealing content.<p>That would have for a pretty boring article, though.

I don't pirate/buy e-books because I can't read books on a screen, it is okay for small articles and coding and whatnot but feeling the paper and guiding your eyes is so much better with paper. (I haven't tried e-ink or the kindle so I don't know how that compares.)

What about a system where you can download an e-book for free, read it for a month or so with the option of rolling-over that term for another month -- as long as someone else hasn't requested it? In short, where are libraries going to be in this?

It already is. E-books are pirated within minutes of staring their major distribution.

The only problem I can imagine is that we won't have enough of piracy of e-books :)