According to research by Dutch firm GfK, only 10 percent of all ebooks on devices were actually paid for, with most of the digital books being pirated.
On average, an e-reader in the Netherlands holds on average 117 ebooks. Out of that total, 11 were bought at legitimate websites. The remaining books were pirated at file-sharing sites or through Bit-torrent files.
Ebooks sales in the Netherlands account for 4.5 percent of total revenue for publishers.
A Dutch man admitted to the criminal justice system that he uploaded over 5,000 ebooks to The Pirate Bay as anti-piracy group BREIN attempted to bring criminal charges against him. However, the court ruled that it was not a criminal case. The Dutch Court system also recently lifted a ban on The Pirate Bay website. At the end of January 2014, the Hague Appeals Court ordered an end to a ban on the website. The Court found that the ban on the Pirate Bay had no impact on slowing down online piracy in the Netherlands.
(More pirated ebooks information.)
Source: Michael Kolowski, “eBook Piracy a Big Deal in the Netherlands,” Good E-Reader, February 5, 2014.
Source: Ernesto, “Pirate Bay Uploader Can’t Be Criminallly Prosecuted, Court Rules,” TorrentFreak, January 29, 2014.
Source: “Netherlands court orders end to Pirate Bay ban,” BBC News, January 29, 2014.