Wave of pirated eBooks may hit Kindle profits

Pirated e-books, which can be downloaded for free, have sparked fears of adversely affecting profits of makers like Amazon, which produces Kindle.

Pirated e-books, which can be downloaded for free, have sparked fears of adversely affecting profits of makers like Amazon, which produces Kindle.

Creating pirate copies of published books is simple and can be done using a computer and a scanner in a comparatively short duration of time.

The pirates have developed software, which people can download to their home computers to convert these pages into images that can be read on a Kindle or similar device, the Daily Mail reported.

"With a Kindle there is pretty much no protection against pirated books. There are programs which can simply convert any piece of text into the proper format and it will show on your Kindle as if you had bought it!" one of the pirate websites said.

It is estimated that up to 20 per cent of e-book downloads are from pirate sites.

Publishers are in talks with the Government and Google to find ways to bring an end to this trade, which breaches their copyright.

They have asked Google to demote pirate websites to make certain they do not appear at the top of web searches for consumers looking to find free e-books.

Even the internet service providers are being pressurized to shut down pirate websites.