Digital book and audiobook piracy is running rampant in Italy, with no end in sight. The Publishers Association issued a report that stated that book piracy was estimated at $856.7 million dollars and cost over 5,400 jobs. The estimated impact of acts of piracy in 2021—fewer copies of books sold, fewer downloads of ebooks and audio books were sold, basically 112 million lost sales were attributed to piracy and around 322,000 piracy incidents were reported daily.

In 2021, the report’s data disclosed that 35% of the population has committed at least one act of piracy involving trade fiction and nonfiction books alone. The demographics among those 15 and older. Ebooks and/or audiobooks were downloaded by 23% at least once from an illegal site on the Internet, the study reports. Some 17% were found to have received at least one ebook from friends or family members and at least 7% seem to have received at least one photocopied book from friends and/or acquaintances.

Among the most concerning elements of the new study’s inputs is that 82% of those surveyed by IPSOS said that they are indeed aware that pirating books is unlawful and illegal, but 64% said they felt they’d be neither caught nor punished. (That figure was actually higher two years ago, at 84%) And 39% said they simply consider it not to be a “serious or very serious” infraction at all.

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