Harry Potter Books On The Internet

[heiditandy]

Original Yahoo! HPFG Header:
No: HPFGUIDX C6392
From: heiditandy
Subject: Harry Potter Books On The Internet
Date: 8/9/00 11:48 am  (ET)

Not legally, of course.
Interesting article from today's Washington Post:

Within 24 hours after "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" was released
last month amid midnight bookstore frenzy, the text was available free
in pirated form on the Internet.

Yesterday the Association of American Publishers and Microsoft announced
that they are working together to pull the plug on such bootleg books.

"Online book piracy is just becoming a problem," said Allan Adler
of the AAP, "because online books are just becoming available in the
marketplace."

The problem: In the future, publishers want to make it easier for
readers to get books online. As a result, the books may be also easier
to replicate.

Illicit copies of Stephen King's recent e-projects, "Riding the Bullet"
and "The Plant," have also popped up on Web sites and message boards
almost as soon as the works were available. And with a little ingenuity
an eager reader can find pirated e-novels by Dean Koontz, Frank Herbert
and scores of other popular writers.

So far, damage to publishers and writers and booksellers has been
negligible. But e-book pioneers see the potential for high-dollar
disaster. After all, making a duplicate of an e-book is, for the
computer-savvy, as simple as copying an e-mail. Scanning a hard-cover
or paperback book into a computer, as the Potter pirates probably did,
is easier than ever. Once the book is in digital form, it can be posted
online and just about anyone with a computer and a modem can pluck it
off the Internet free.

And illegal, said Adler. By making a digital copy of a book you have not
paid for, he explained, "you are depriving the author or the publisher
of the opportunity to be compensated for the work, effort and resources
that went into the creation of the book."

Under the law, he added, the creators are entitled to be paid.

Of course, lazy profs, cheapskate college kids, high-powered lawyers and
other folks have been photocopying textbook pages for years. Offshore
presses have been pumping out bootleg versions of American books. Perhaps
even you have copied Blockbuster videos onto your own tapes.

So it makes sense that e-books will be the next freeware frontier.
"It is cheaper than buying the book," Adler said.
And there is a culture that has grown up on the Internet with the belief
that information wants to be free. They "believe that the Internet creates
a completely new paradigm for information dissemination," Adler said,
"and shouldn't be subject to property rules like those underlying the
copyright system."


It's slightly hard to believe that in this Age of Aliteracy, when
people can read but don't, the number of readers who might actually
download a work of literature would be of genuine financial concern to
publishers. Stranger things have happened.

The AAP and Microsoft have launched an anti-piracy Web site,
www.microsoft.com/piracy/epub. They and other groups have adopted a
three-pronged strategy: using special encryption technology, enforcing
existing copyright laws and educating the public about the evils of
pirating intellectual property.


Education, he emphasized, is the key. "As a publishing industry," Brass
said, "we have not convinced people that stealing bits is stealing."