[Katsunami]

Source: Tweakers.net

Translation:

Most e-books that reside on Dutch e-readers are not paid for. This is shown through statistics provided by market research company GfK. On average, a bit below 10 percent of e-books is actually paid for; all the rest is acquired by illegal means.

On average, a Dutch e-reader contains 117 e-books, 11 of which are paid for, says Algemeen Dagblad, based on the numbers provided by GfK. The rest is either free, or acquired through illegal means such as Torrent-sites or Usenet (newsgroups). The exact percentage of books acquired through illegal means is not known.

In the Netherlands e-books are just a small part of the revenue of the book market: only about 4.5 percent. Writers and publishers have told AD that they are going to launch a campain about "Reading Legally" on social media. However, downloading books through torrents or usenet is legal in the Netherlands, uploading (distributing them) is not.

Last week, libraries have started to loan e-books. Not all publishers are cooperating, but A.W. Bruna, De Bezige Bij, AtlasContact, De Fontein and some smaller publishers are among the ones that do. Library members may borrow all 5.000 books for free, up to April. After that, for books newer than three years, one has to pay €20 to borrow 18 books.