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‘Harry Potter 6 e-book already being pirated!’
July 16, 2005 | 12:27 pm
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By David Rothman
Just a few days ago, I suggested that J.K. Rowling could make more money if she authorized legal e-books rather than create a vast market for pirates. Guess what. As reported by Colin in MobileRead, the inevitable is happening with Rowling’s latest novel, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince:
“Bookstores across the globe simultaneously flung open their doors at GMT 2301 on Friday night to allow Harry Potter fans all over the world to snatch up the latest volume of the boy-wizard’s adventures. Some of them didn’t start reading the paper book right away; instead, they went to the next scanning device and started running their OCR software on little Potter.
“In a joint-effort the pirates are now meeting in dedicated IRC channels with imaginative names such as #pottermania or #potterwork to spread the work of scanning and proofreading. As of right now, at least chapters 1-6, 8 and 12-13 have been scanned and proofread, and are already available for download on multiple (mostly Russia-based) web-server (txt and html). My guess is that it will take at most another 24 hours for the entire e-book to leak to the Net.”
The pirates finished the job in half a day or so. Now people are turning to both the MobileRead folks and the TeleBlog for URLs to the illegal editions. Sorry, both Colin and I are against piracy, so we won’t post any addresses. Fighting piracy is one way in which well-stocked national digital library systems could help–by reducing the incentive.
Not in this case but in others, shorter copyright terms would also be good. Why doesn’t John Edwards, the great “populist” who sat on the copyright-related judiciary committee, care about repealing the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act so literacy is less associated with criminality?
Both Rowling and Prof. Edwards, son of a textile worker, might pay a lot less attention to greedy copyright lawyers and a lot more to writer Mike Cane: “Someone shove JK into the twenty-first century…you’d think someone who started out as poor as she did, handwriting the first on paper in a pub, would see the light… someone must have put a spell on her!” The heavy demand for pirated books without DRM shows that reasonably priced e-books have a future internationally. India alone has a middle-class of several hundred million and is increasingly net.savvy. In this Internet era, what if Rowling could reach the Indian markets right away–amid the excitement of the first days of publication?
Update, July 17: This, of course, is not the first pirating of Harry Potter. Here’s an item about an earlier edition going on the Net.
Update, July 19, 5:30: For the curious, the text files I found were in ASCII, Word and PDF.
(MobileRead via Mike Cane.)
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Comments:
The book was simultaneously released in India around the country. She already reaches India. No need for eBook on that count
Frankly even if she had released an eBook version, I would have preferred the hard copy. It is much easier on the eyes considering such tomes she writes.
Personally I doubt if an eBook version would curb piracy. It will however reduce the pleasure of reading her books. If I was in Mrs. Rowling’s position I would have done the same thing as she had done. After all she wants children to read books. Computer screen is still a cathode ray tube (ignoring the laptops or flat screen monitors which are still a strain compared to books) with all associated strains.
Ugh, you haven’t heard of PDAs? Or gizmos like the Cybook? I’m really hoping that Mrs. Rowling and her lawyer are like you and simply don’t understand the technology. Then there’s hope for change. Thanks for writing. – DR
if u wanna get the free pdf version of “harry potter and the half-blood prince” , just visit [deleted]
[Moderator's note: Many thanks for contributing your comment to the TeleBlog, Linh, and I'll most welcome your thoughts on darknets and unauthorized repro of e-books. But by U.S. law, however, we cannot publish URLs associated with illegal copies. Thanks for your cooperation. I know you're not out to make a buck, just to help people. But unauthorized copies are still against the law where TeleRead is based. Needless to say, well-stocked national digital libraries online would be one way to address the issue of getting good e-books into the hands of cash-strapped students and others who cannot afford them. Your thoughts? Thanks again for your understanding, Linh. - David The Moderator Guy.]
I am looking for free e-book of harry potter and half blood prince.Can you give me the web site link? I really want toread it
Hi, Sonia. Best to buy the paper copy. Potter books are still under copyright. Sorry. David
well i too think that ebooks can never give the same pleasure as books can.
but 1 thing i wanna mention ;:
in india, a harry potter book costs around 700-800 rs a piece on an avg ofcourse.
its no joke for a child frm a middle or lower middle class family.
i would also like to remind that the per capita income calculated for the whole country would not cross this number.
in that aspect, ebooks are cheaper,and ofcourse more easy to access
well i’ve read all thev harry potter bvooks so far .
i want to pack it into an ebook and add to my collection
i also wanna know when is the one coming?
Nobody should ever buy a pirated version of the book
Well Im a japanese interchnge student and I love the harry potter bookes actually, but I have been interchanged to the country of Panama, and not in a very tech advanced place, but i am grateful to have the experience, point is, the book cant really be found here in wha is “Bocas” so I have optioned to download the pirated version, and i know it is wrong, but it is the only way I can actually read the booke, or wait another two year untill I return to my birth grounds, but I do admit that if i had known there were legal buyable ebooks I would have bought it at the time…. or maybe not… I do not know…
I could not resist posting on this revived Harry Potter ebook thread. Its funny that the subject of legally ‘pirated’ ebooks hasn’t come up before.
In the US, Bookshare.org distributes electronic versions created from scans of all the HP books but only to disabled readers, so it is perfectly legal, for now anyway. Bookshare files can also be downloaded as braille, but the transcription is automated, so the results can be mixed.
How long will it be before publishers trying to sell ebooks notice that non-profits like Bookshare are actually competing with them, and using their own books permission-free to do so? The ironic aspect is that readers with disabilities are the one group of consumers that truly -need- ebooks right now, and they need them to be accessible, which means very transparent DRM, if any at all.
Ebook boosters/promoters/pushers should have started with disabled readers in the first place. These folks are the core audience for this technology, and they have not been given their due.
[...] J.K. Rowling has certainly inspired the masses to read. She is a publishing phenomenon and Hollywood has two more films to make of her books (nothing confirmed as yet for the last book). Rowling’s estimated fortune makes her the first author to become a billionaire from writing. She still retains the rights to all of her Harry Potter novels. From what I’ve read of Ms. Rowling, she sounds like a very astute business woman which surprises as to her stance about ebooks. It has been confirmed that Ms. Rowling still will not release any of her books in ebook format. How disappointing. She cites one reason for that is to discourage piracy which is rather ironic considering that it’s been established that her work is already being pirated. Her reasons are her own and I respect them but I’m sure bookstores across the country are happy that she will not allow any of her work in any type of digital media. Despite the fact that ebooks make up a tiny portion of the bookselling market. I can’t follow her reasoning. Alas, I’ll have to accept it. [...]
I stumbled over this discussion of people wanting “something for nothing.” Typical. What I was looking for was a field called fan fiction. I had read a news article that people have written their own versions of Harry Potter and a couple were good enough to be mistaken for the real thing. I also read that J K Rowling seems nothing wrong in this and has endorsed some of the better versions.
I found a site called fanfiction that listed hundreds of tv series, books and movies written by fans. They were even rated for age and had comments by readers with the manuscripts.
Knowing there were literally thousands of Harry Potter stories out there I did a google search and found a site that awards prizes for the best Harry Potter stories and books. Its called Twisted Colours awards. Now I won;t have to search through tons of drivel for something unique for my seven year old niece.
It will be a story none of her friends in a small town has and it has the approval of Rowling.
Hi, Jim. Thanks for your note. You’re absolutely, positively, not with the above-mentioned Potter site? Apologies in advance, but I have no way of knowing. But, yes, you’re right about JK. Big thanks for that pointer! – David
No need of the paper based copy but the eBook is more than enough for me I download it on my mobile phone so I can read it all day long when ever I could be without the idea I might lose it or even get dirty or I accedently damage it
thanks
Spend a few bucks to buy the book. you can find especially low prices if you go to ebay. paperback ones cost less than $10 and sometimes they sell the whole set for $30, which is about $5 per book. (of course, those very cheap ones are second hands).. =)
I do respect JK Rowling for her great work but she HAS TO go with he current market trends. If she ignores them and work like a 19th century writer,she’s bound incur heavy losses. Ofcourse there are 20th century people like Angusman (the first commentor) but thenagain there are a lot of people like me who read all 7 books by free pdf copies. Using a computer to read books maybe difficult but you can use ebook readers and smartphones. I converted all pdf’s to txt using the notepad and read them with my nokia 5800.
Ms. Rowling please do not forget what happend to dinosaurus. They refused to (they couldn’t actually. But the end result is same) change with the world and perished. I don’t want you to meet the same fate. The world is changing to the ‘google style’, ‘facebook style’ and ‘ubuntu style’ where you give things for free and earn money by all the other means. You are creative person I’m sure you can come up with some idea to earn money by giving free books.
@zen – this thread is more than 5 years old, but the topic comes up quite a bit. I think JKR’s position was just recently discussed in another thread. One insightful comment by a poster was that since JKR is a bit like Ray Bradbury (thus a tiny bit crazy when it comes to the idea of ebooks) and since she is worth several hundred million pounds, she likely just doesn’t care about whether her books are made into ebooks and the money that is lost by not making ebooks. The other point now is that her books are so old and the underground fans of her books have produced ebooks of her works that could not be surpassed by legal versions made by a publisher.
I just saw this while I was looking for info on the deathly hallows film and didn’t notice it was so old. Maybe she just doesn’t care. But I really do feel bad about all the money she could have earned because I’m still a poor undergraduate. Funny how two capitalists (assuming she’s also a capitalist) have completely opposite ideas about a huge market.