New Potter book posted on Chinese Web site

Reuters/The Hollywood Reporter ^ | July 21, 2005 8:47 AM ET | By Jonathan Landreth

[Californiajones]

Less than 24 hours after the English edition of the latest Harry Potter book went on sale in China's capital on the weekend, the full text of the 672-page tome was available for free on the Internet as an unauthorized e-book, the Beijing News reported on Wednesday.

The Shui Mu Tsing Hua bulletin board service posted the full text of "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" on Sunday, according to the Chinese language daily.

Author J.K. Rowling has long warned readers against unauthorized electronic versions of her work. Her fantasy series enjoys vast popularity in China, however, spawning in 2002 a copycat adventure, "Harry Potter and Leopard-Walk-Up-To-Dragon," by an unknown Chinese author who attributed the work to Rowling.

Using a guest log in, a check of the password-protected electronic bulletin board showed the pirated "e-book" was no longer available under a "chat" thread labeled "Harry Potter," which repeatedly turned up an "error" message instead.

The administrator of the BBS -- affiliated with Tsinghua University, one of China's most prestigious research institutions -- could not be reached for comment.

An electronic publishing expert said that with close cooperation and a digital camera it was possible for a team of people to get such a long book on to the Internet in one day, the daily reported.

A spokesman in the legal department of China's Copyright Protection Office told the daily, "If there is no e-version authorized, then the author's rights have already been infringed."

Over the weekend, Beijing bookstores sold some 5,000 legitimate hardbound copies of the book for 178 yuan ($21.51) each.

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter

[Californiajones]

Uh, anyone want to guess as to the real intent of all this Chinese piracy of western intellectual property rights? Methinks it's economic warfare, Mao/Lenin/Marx's style. Hollywood and the entertainment conglomerates need to stop salivating over China's 1.3 billion people and recognize they are being attacked by China's totalitarian, militaristic Marxist oligarchs. Dictatorship of the proletariat, my ass. Dictatorship in Beijing is still a commie scheme to enrich the elites at the expense of their own people and the rest of the world. Sorry Ms. Rowling, but they want your bucks and they want to demolish your ability to make more billions off Harry Potter. All is fair in love and war but the West has to see it is already AT WAR with Beijing. So far, only Taiwan is wise to them.

[John Filson]

WMT last trade - 49.39.

[nmh]

The Communist Chinese have NO regard for the rule of law.

If you think this is bad, you ought to see the pirated software they have over in HK. It's rare for folks to buy a legitimate copy. Copyrights mean nothing to them.

[heleny]

An electronic publishing expert said that with close cooperation and a digital camera it was possible for a team of people to get such a long book on to the Internet in one day, the daily reported.

The pirated versions usually appear to be the work of someone using a scanner (or a digital camera, I suppose) with a text conversion program. There are usually many typos (i=l, m=rr, etc. from the program) and occasionally repeated or missing pages from human error.

This book also appeared on Russian sites, and when I last checked, google had those pages cached, although the direct links were broken.