Hear for yourself the exquisite quality of the narration in an illegal netcast of Harry Potter 6. The audio quality is mediocre; the reading itself, excellent. Sorry I can’t reproduce a long sample without legal risks. The present snippet qualifies under fair use, especially given its newsworthiness to participants in copyright debates.
Question: Anyone out there with a legal copy of the CD or cassette? Are the pirates simply replaying a legal audio on the Net without permission–as I now believe after hearing an interview with narrator Jim Dale? Or is one of the pirates a pro doing an original reading? Either way, somone is wittingly or unwittingly making a point. Audio piracy, not just text piracy, will happen online even if J.K. Rowling refuses to authorize a legal version of the audio for the Net.
No charge, J.K.: I’ll graciously not bill J.K. Rowling for the free multimedia publicity I’m giving her. (Humor alert.)
Interestingly enough, the UK audio CD version (read by the wonderful Stephen Fry) is not released until the end of August (see my URI for a link to it on Amazon and further details).
There is no real technical barrier to broadcasting the audio book over the Net – it can be done by a single person, and does not require the teams of people working on it that the pirating of the text version did. Shoutcast software is freely available, and CD-ripping tools are very common. Speech is generally considered to require less bitrate than music, so whoever was behind the broadcast probably compressed it down as far as it would go without becoming distorted in order to either save bandwidth or increase the number of people who could listen at once.
As far as J.K.Rowling’s dire imprecations against the dangers of pirated eBooks are concerned, there would seem to be some truth in what she says – I have heard a rumour that prior to the release of Harry Potter 6, a fake version was circulating about the Internet which contained what was allegedly a well-written work of fan fiction. It occurs to me to wonder whether this might not have been some sort of tactic to try and thwart pirates (putting false files onto P2P networks is not an unknown strategy, for example) but if it was, it seems to have failed spectacularly.
Thanks for your thoughts, Dan–valuable as usual. I’m still placing my bets on the audio being an unauthorized pickup of a legal version. Check out Amazon.com’s audio interview with Jim Dale, reader of the legal Potter audio released in the States. Compare his voice to the sample from the pirated online version. My belief, as you can tell, is that both the unauthorized text and audio are authentic.
Not quite related but something worth mentioning: Via Amazon.com, Potter fans can also read an interesting text interview with Rowling herself.
– David
The .WAV sample is Jim Dale, who voiced the other Potter audio books (at least for the USA markets.) If this is the audio version make the rounds on the Internet, it’s unauthorized. Shameful. And not the first time, I might add.
I guess most people see the word “copyright” and completely ignore the meaning of the third syllable.
That someone — anyone — demands an Internet-downloadable version of either the book or the audio version does not obligate the copyright owner to release same, nor does it release from legal ramifications anyone who puts the thing on the Internet.
John
Thanks for your thoughts, John. Like you, I’m against piracy. And I don’t think that J.K. Rowling has a legal obligation to release anything. But in my opinion she’d be (still) richer if she did authorize e-books of her works. You bet she deserves royalties. That’s the sad thing. The pirated copies leave her without any royalties from the bit-and-byte versions. More than a few techie Potter fans would love to be able to buy legal copies of both the texts and the audios. Meanwhile, keep in mind that if her heirs are Luddites, it could be a century or so before legal e versions of Potter books appeared in the states. Especially there is the moral issue of depriving Net-oriented young people of the works in an electronic form. “Shameful.” – David
I’ll download it, I’ll listen to it, but I’ll still buy the UK version, because Steven Fry is the consummate storyteller, his voice is perfectly suited to audiobooks. I have to laugh at the fact that they’ve revoiced the audiobook with a different person for the US market… What’s the point? Steven Fry’s already read it, he’s very understandable, his voice is great… Makes no sense.
where do i get it and is it free please tell me because it is everything to me
Sorry, but Harry Potter books aren’t free in either text nor audio–except from your library, perhaps. The audio, by the way, may not be out yet in the U.K. Check sites such as Amazon.com or the localized versions of the site. Happy reading/listening! – DR