UK women over 35 years read pirated e-books!

London: A new survey has discovered a new breed of pirates taking over the Internet - women over the age of 35.

It found that these book-loving women are the main culprits behind a surge in illegal download of e-books. The rise in popularity of gadgets such as the Kindle and iPad has seen the popularity of e-books soar. A fifth of Britons now read them. In the poll, more than a third of those who own tablet computers admitted they had illegally downloaded an e-book. And a quarter of them planned to carry on doing so. The majority of those reading pirated e-books are women over the age of 35. But only five percent of them know about the Digital Economy Act which bans piracy, according to the study by Entertainment Media Research for law firm Wiggin. Fifty-nine percent of those polled said people who download and read pirated e-books should not be punished. Instead the websites that allow the illegal downloads should be blocked, they said. “Internet piracy among women has always been a rarity but the popularity of e-books looks to have changed that,” the Daily Express quoted Alexander Ross, a partner at Wiggin, as saying. “It is impossible not to conclude that the publishing industry could soon be facing a problem on a scale approaching that which confronts the music and film industries,” he added. ANI