The top digital publishers in the world constantly petition Google to remove the Pirate Bay from the search results, but it is not happened yet. Penguin Random House, Kensington Publishing, Recorded Books and a slew of others are not only trying to get their e-books removed from the Torrent site, but trying to blacklist it entirely.

One of the big reasons why Google has not removed the Pirate Bay from the search results is because they do not see the homepage as infringing. It simply contains the iconic pirate ship logo, a search box, as well as some other links. Since TPB’s homepage is not infringing, Google categorically refuses to remove it from its search results. While the site itself has been downranked, due to the high number of takedown requests Google receives for it, ThePirateBay.org remains listed.

Digimarc is one of the largest anti-piracy companies out there and they employ social DRM or watermarks to e-books, allowing them to easily be tracked online. The company conducted a recent study that found 41% of all adult pirates are aged between 18 and 29 but perhaps surprisingly, 47% fall into the 30 to 44-year-old bracket. Around 13% of pirates have an annual household income of under $30k, with those earning between $30k and $59k making up 19% of the total. At this point there is a sizeable leap, with 36% of pirates claiming to earn between $60k and $99k per annum. Around 29% make more than $100k a year.

Overall, the majority of illegal downloaders are relatively well-educated, with more than 70% having either graduated from college or in possession of a postgraduate degree.

E-book piracy is “a very significant issue and of great concern” to publishers, said Stephen Lotinga of the Publishers Association, which works to take down and block pirated e-books links and sites. “As an industry we’ve not had the situation that the music and film industries have gone through,” Lotinga said. “But that obviously is 4m books that authors and publishers aren’t getting paid for, and should be getting paid for, and it’s a particular worry for publishers at a time when e-book sales are in decline.”