Popularity of pirated book sites increased by 26.6% — study

In the world, e-book piracy is most popular in the United States (12.8%), Vietnam, Japan (6.8%), and the Russian Federation (5.1%). This was reported to Chytomo by MUSO, which conducted a study.

The researchers measured 220.6 billion visits to pirate websites across all media industries during the last twelve months from April 1, 2022 to March 31, 2023. The results showed that 60.8 billion visits were to piracy websites. This is 26.6% more than last year.

The study says that the demand for e-book piracy has increased dramatically since 2017. And it reached its highest peak in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, e-book piracy became the second largest digital piracy sector after movie piracy.

In addition, MUSO data shows that publishing piracy increased by 189% in five years (from April 2017 to March 2023). It is predicted that the demand for piracy will continue to grow in 2023.

It is noted that users discover illegal publishing content through various channels, including direct access to websites, search engines, and social media sites.

In general, 64.4% of traffic worldwide is pirated directly on websites and only 21.2% comes from search engines. This means that almost two-thirds of the audience already know the sites where they want to download pirated versions of books.

MUSO is a technology and data company that provides the most comprehensive view of global digital piracy and unlicensed media consumption.

As previously reported, Ukrainian language and culture are studied in 30 countries by more than 160 centers of Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar studies.