In the virtual stacks, pirated books find readers

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In the virtual stacks, pirated books find readers
Last modified: June 3, 2004, 1:43 PM PDT
By Sandeep Junnarkar
The New York Times

"Early in his undergraduate years at Indiana University, Joseph Ruesewald said, he had trouble finding the required titles for a couple of his classes at the local bookstores.

When he tried ordering the books online, he learned it would take too long for delivery. Having come of age in the era of Napster, Kazaa and other file-sharing networks infamous as bazaars for pirated music, he knew exactly how to obtain the books--if not in his hands, at least for his computer's hard drive.

Over the semesters, downloading books free and reading them on his monitor became routine, he said. He learned to adjust the screen color to off-white to help reduce eye strain and depleted his university printing allotment by running off hundreds of pages at a time."