E-book piracy costing billions

According to a recent study by Attributor--a web service monitor for illegally posted content--publishers could be losing out on $3 billion this year due to e-book piracy (the report linked in the text is worth checking out; informative and concise):

Attributor’s Rich Pearson said he was surprised about how bad the piracy problem has become since the company became more involved with book publishing over a year ago. Of the 14 book categories tracked, piracy was most prevalent in the business and investing segment which had an average of 13,000 free downloads per title, the report found. The professional and technical segment was a close second followed by science, and computer and Internet. The average number of free fiction downloads was just over 2,000, the study found. Pearson said he wasn’t surprised to find a “high correlation” between books that are illegally downloaded and subject areas that students are the most interested in. Still, the survey found lots of illegal fiction downloads with Attributor finding 7,951 illegal downloads of Angels and Demons and 1,604 downloads of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. In nonfiction, Architect’s Drawings was downloaded 9,715 times.

I'm not surprised about that "high correlation" of student subject matter books, either; my books for my first semester of college cost $588, which is an absolute sin. Had I had access to that kind of technology ten years ago, I would have done the same thing. E-book publishers are just going to have to suck it up and deal with it, just like the music industry does.