Authors fresh blood for net pirates

First music, then movies, now Maeve Binchy...

Books from the some of the world's best-loved authors are being illegally distributed over the internet through file-sharing networks such as gnutella. Around 7,267 pirated books, from J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter to Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh, are being freely downloaded according to research from web monitoring firm, Envisional. The study found that works by US horror writer Stephen King are the most popular with internet pirates, with nearly 1,600 individual copies of his books traded over the internet. Ben Coppin, chief operating officer of Envisional, said in statement, "The internet is set to have the greatest effect upon the publishing industry since the invention of the printing press."