TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (299)

This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of TorrentFreak (via Techdirt) (from Monday, December 13; links good at time of posting):

Unsurprisingly, [author Anne B.] Ragde isn’t a huge fan of eBook sharing. In order to thwart piracy, she refused to allow her latest novel to be released as an audiobook since the format is popular with file-sharers and also denied the publication of Russian and Chinese versions.

“Piracy scares the hell out of me. I do not know what to say. I lose sleep at night over it,” said Ragde. “I have figured out that I’ve lost half a million kroner ($72,500) on piracy of my books, maybe more.”

....

In response to a question about her habits when it comes to buying or otherwise acquiring copied or counterfeit items, Ragde’s anti-piracy halo slipped more than a little.

“Pirated handbags? Yes, I do buy them,” she said. “I feel that the genuine Prada bags have such an inflated price.”

Ragde then reportedly went on to list many other items she’s bought legitimately but was kindly assisted with a further confession by her son, Jo. If her halo had slipped with the bag admission, it was now set to strangle her.

“You have a pirated MP3 collection,” Jo added, helpfully. “We copied the first 1500 songs from one place and 300 from another.”

“Yes,” admitted Ragde. “There were a lot of things on the iPod.”

....

In a follow up to the revelations published in the interview, Ragde tried to defend herself by saying the quotes had been taken out of context. She also went on to blame the music piracy on her son while insisting she’s always been against illicit file-sharing.

“The stuff on my ipod is not representative of my relationship with the music industry and the products they produce. I pay for my music,” she insisted.

Ragde says that the ipod is in storage somewhere in her cottage so when she goes there to celebrate Christmas she will pull it out and delete all the music.

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