Inside the Mind of a Book Pirate

Although we called last week “Book Piracy Week,” the impressive reader response reminded us that the issue will not go away. Like a cheesy holiday special urging you to keep Christmas in your heart all year round, we’ll help you keep piracy in mind during 2010.

Today The Millions published “Confessions of a Book Pirate“– an interview with a reader who had uploaded 50 books on the file-sharing site BitTorrent last month. In a long, probing interview, the file-sharing user nicknamed The Real Caterpillar defended his activity and gave publishers candid reasons why some readers are pirating books.

Here’s an excerpt: “My electronic library has about a 50 percent crossover with my physical library, so that I can read the book on my electronic reader, ‘loan’ the book without endangering my physical copy, or eventually rid myself of the paper copy if it is a book I do not have strong feelings about. I do not buy DRM’d ebooks that are priced at more than a few dollars, but would pay up to $10 for a clean file if it was a new release. I do not pretend that uploading or downloading unpurchased electronic books is morally correct, but I do think it is more of a grey area than some of your readers may.”

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