Dear J.K.: I know you’re a pen-and-paper woman when you compose, not just a p-book-only reader. But some of your fans feel otherwise about E.
An illegal copy of your latest, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, was just removed from the Photobucket Web site.
Meantime Publishers Lunch has picked up other news. “A Vancouver man says he found 495 pages worth of the new Harry Potter on a bit torrent file-sharing website, saved as jpg of photographed individual book pages.” Word of the bit-torrenting is spreading all over the Net. If you go by a Google News search, those are just two examples of the problem.
While you and your publishers can sue to shut down the pirates, wouldn’t the best anti-piracy precaution be legal copies online? Even if they came encumbered with obnoxious DRM, this would be better than no copies at all.
Potter fans even in Iran
J.K., I wish you could see all the traffic that the TeleBlog is getting from people looking for illegal copies. They won’t find them here, ever. But elsewhere? Definitely. If nothing else, keep in mind that you’ve got fans in many corners of the world who can’t just drop by the neighborhood Barnes & Noble. From Vietnam to Iran to China, the Warez-hunters love Potter. And with improved e-book technology, what’s now a minor problem could get much worse.
I hope you’ll show some consideration here—and think ahead about the potential of e-books for schools and libraries. Imagine holding a charity auction of an e-book reader with your signature included in the firmware.
Happy e-reading (someday)!
David Rothman, the TeleRead guy
Related: Harry Potter, Penguin and Piracy, from the Hindu. Also see a supposed Harry Potter plot-spoiler page (don’t say we didn’t warn you).
I know I make this point all the time, but just to reiterate, there are versions of lots of books that are not eBooks available on the Internet. And that is piracy clear and simple. What is not always evident to the outsider is that in almost all the cases that I have seen, these books are from scans of the pages. They are not eBooks that have been “hacked”. It’s just someone with way too much time on their hands scanning in pages. I think that piracy and hacking are sometimes lumped together.
Also, while I would love love love to read the new Harry Potter in eBook, we can’t pick on Ms. Rowling for making her decision on the format she wants to be read in. These are still early days, and in terms of huge authors who choose NOT to be published electronically, the list grows smaller each year.
Claire
hey i really think they shoul put them online for e-book… they cant help that the world is becoming more computerized…i mean seriously my 3 yr old just asked for a laptop for her birthday! gawd get with the program! let the world use computers!
[…] collectively done more to crush copyright than any megacorp — check out the many illegal Potters and the frivolous Muggles-related lawsuit.) The lexicon’s author knew what was at stake when […]