WikiLeaks has revealed Sony's servers, which were hacked last year, contained several pirated e-books.
The Daily Dot, an online publication that covers Internet topics, reported that the pirated e-books included Inside Cyber Warfare and Hacking the Next Generation. Both are educational books on hacking.
Commentators see this as ironic in light of Sony's own fight against piracy.
Sony's reputation was damaged after it was a victim of a large-scale hack towards the end of last year, which was said to have been the worst of its type on a company on US soil.
WikiLeaks' revelations included Sony's plans to fight piracy through fake torrents.
Sony was initially one of the companies behind the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act in the US. The law was eventually taken off the table by Congress after it met opposition. It sought to protect intellectual property and would have allowed companies like Sony to censor sites that engage in, enable or facilitate copyright infringement.
Nicholas Hall, an associate at Michalson Attorneys, says although Sony may be against piracy, the fact that pirated e-books, whatever the content, were found on a large company's servers in "not surprising at all".
"It is quite common for employees to abuse company infrastructure to download pirated content, regardless of what that company's public stance on piracy may be."
Hall says, in South Africa, some of the biggest "pirates" are "ostensibly corporates and universities since employees or students at those institutions use the good Internet connections to download pirated content".
Jeffery Carr, author of Inside Cyber Warfare, responded via Twitter to the news that a pirated version of his book had been found on Sony servers by asking why Sony could not afford to buy a copy.
Another Twitter user also pointed out the irony by tweeting: "So, I can download a pirated book on cyber war posted as part of a data dump stolen as part of a cyber war incident, from a company who opposes piracy so much, they installed rootkits on the computers of customers."
The "rootkits" reference goes back to a scandal in 2005, when Sony BMG, seeking to combat music piracy, placed rootkit malware on its audio CDs. When inserted into a PC, the software secretly installed itself, scoured the PC for music and then reported its findings to a central server operated by Sony.
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