Shooting the Messenger (on purpose?)

I like the Harry Potter series, even though I’m only experiencing it through movies, soon to be two installments behind the books. And while I think it is a dying model, I also respect the idea of proprietary works and copyright. However, Scholastic’s response to a TechCrunch post yesterday—about someone putting page photos on BitTorrent of the current not-yet-available eighth seventh and final book—is incredibly naive and maddening. Or maybe very shrewd.

Duncan Riley, the author of the July 17 post, noted:

Whilst the validity of the hype surrounding Harry Potter may be subject to debate, what the leaking of the book does demonstrate is that the days of the mainstream media and publishers strictly controlling the dissemination of information has well and truly past; simply where there is a fan with a will, there is a way.

Apparently, that opinion wasn’t shared by Scholastic. Riley, who was propagating news from a blog post in TorrentFreak earlier that day, received an email from Mark S. Seidenfeld, attorney for the U.S. publisher of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. In it, Seidenfeld demanded that TC remove or disable the links to Pirate Bay where the photos were posted, claiming such links “infringe the IP Owner’s rights according to state and federal law.” The popular blog’s response is, in essence, bring it on—we’ll make the whole incident completely transparent.

TorrentFreak reported Tuesday that a copy of the new Harry Potter book available on BitTorrent.

When the first post showed up Tuesday, I passed it along to Amy. She is an avid fan and has already reserved her copy of the book, which officially goes on sale this weekend. I emailed it to some other friends who were likely more interested in the BitTorrent aspect of the story than the secrets to the end of the Harry Potter series. A less busy day might have also included a tweet or blog post. And I’m not even that big of a fan. Imagine how many other people in world did that, or more, over the course of the past 24 hours. Can Scholastic really think paying a lawyer’s wage to write some legalese emails is going to contain the dissemination of that information? And does it really matter, just a few days before the media (both professional and amateur) will be commenting on the contents of the book more than they did Anna Nicole Smith or Paris Hilton?

Then again, maybe that is the point. Perhaps the master plan isn’t to smother the embers of information but rather fan it to make a wildfire. Blog posts beget ads and readers with comments. Search engines looking for those posts spawn links to Amazon and other places to sell the book. The population that knows about BitTorrent, let alone feels comfortable using it, is pretty insignificant compared to the number of people who read blogs and buy books. Maybe the impetus behind Seidenfeld’s scary-sounding letter is promotion, not intimidation.

At present, there isn’t a link on that original post, possibly because TC was cooperative and edited the content or maybe because it wasn’t there from the start. All that remains is the factual instruction: “For educational purposes only, the Harry Potter book can be found by searching The Pirate Bay.”