Pirates Get Potter

Posted on July 21, 2005

It only took 12 hours for the digital pirates to scan the text of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and offer the illegal copies for sale online.

Copies of the audio version of the book were also widespread on file-trading networks such as BitTorrent. A lawyer for author J.K. Rowling's agents, Christopher Little, said his firm was working to combat the piracy but admitted that some illicit copies would probably slip through. "We have put in place some countermeasures but I can't disclose the specifics," said Neil Blair. "We have sent takedown notices (against Web sites hosting the illicit copies) but we haven't filed any lawsuits."
Even thousands of illicit downloads would be no more than a drop in the ocean for a book that sold 8.9 million copies in 24 hours. But the Potter piracy is likely to add to media companies' fears that online file-trading is a threat to nearly every aspect of their businesses.
Rowling has railed against unauthorized "Harry Potter" e-books on her Web site in the past. "You should NEVER trust any Harry Potter e-books offered for download from the internet or on P2P/file-trading networks," she wrote in January, warning they may also expose users to computer viruses or fraud.

Street vendors in India have also been seen hawking illegal copies of the book for very low prices. Given how bizarre some of the other illegal translations of American bestsellers have been (Remember Bill Clinton aka Big Watermelon and the really fat Chinese Harry Potter?), one can only imagine what those hapless buyers are getting.