Audience for illegal newspaper articles 1.5 times bigger than official readership

According to a study by Attributor, a copyright violation detection company, the audience for illegal copies of online newspaper articles is about one and a half times larger than the readership of the original publisher. Attributor\'s study reviewed 30 billion Web pages hosting copies of articles of over 100 major news(paper) sites.

Attributor estimated that an average web publisher could gain an extra $150,000 turnover by selling ads alongside its unlicensed material. This estimate was based on the assumption that advertisers would pay $1 for every 1,000 pages of unauthorized material viewed on Web sites that are not owned by the copyright owners

Currently, this money flows to the pirates whose only contribution is the distribution of content.