Research into the piracy of digital coursework books for students has found that levels of illegal sharing are ridiculously high, with nearly three-quarters of the educational ebooks researchers looked for easily discoverable on file-sharing networks.
Science and engineering textbooks were unsurprisingly the most commonly-thieved type of learning ebooks, with 18 of the 20 texts searched for listed for download on one unnamed ebook sharing site. It's easy to understand why, as the BBC quotes the example of student Jubel Amin, who paid over £180 for just two textbooks. Wouldn't you be tempted to do a quick scan for a cheeky PDF copy of whatever you needed before shelling out such a large chunk of cash on study materials? [BBC]
Image credit: Student books from Shutterstock
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