Yesterday, thousands of copies of the new Harry Potter book worth around £1m have been stolen from a trading estate in northern England, police revealed today.

http://books.guardian.co.uk/harrypotter/story/0,10761,979308,00.html

Heh. What currency do you accept? Euro? Dollar? Neither one, but Harry Potter books :)

Hey,

Love them all!!! Book 5 I want I want I want!!! Let's see what's in my wallet... :p

Hmmm, I'm going to have to start reading this series one of these days...maybe when they finally release an ebook format! ;)

Craig

Hey,

Many popular books are in ebook format. This is a shame but there is no way to stop information in any format especially digital. I have seen all four harry potter ebooks available. The fifth one will be around soon. It always happens. Does anyone know if fair use is put into play with books? IE I own a harry potter book and type it up for my own use?

Visorprismman: if you reproduce the pages for your own use, there is no violation. The tricky question is what you mean by "own use". Suppose you are a teacher and reproduce pages (not whole books) that you distribute to your students. Is that "fair use"? Almost certainly not, and publishers will attack you. A lot of it comes down to how much copying (and money) is involved. radleyp

Originally posted by visorprismman
Does anyone know if fair use is put into play with books? IE I own a harry potter book and type it up for my own use? That is a very good question! Does anyone know the answer to this?

Hey,

I only asked because I do most of my reading on my palm pilot. Wonder if I can buy the book and have someone type it for me and put it in my palm...would that be fair use?

Yes, provided only you (and relatives and friends) use it and you do not offer it for resale. radleyp

HP 5 was a great book!

Originally posted by cbarnett
Hmmm, I'm going to have to start reading this series one of these days...maybe when they finally release an ebook format! ;) NYT wrote an article (http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/14/technology/14BOOK.html?pagewanted=all&position=) (requires free registration - but heh, who is not registered at nytimes.com :D) today on Harry Potter and the Internet Pirates.
They talk about illegally scanned Potter books and also unofficially translated portions of Order of the Phoenix in German and Czech.
Most interesting is the comment from the business manager of Ms. Rowling's literary agency that he did not expect the illicit e-books to have an impact on sales of the printed book. "More than 200 million copies of the first four books have been sold in 55 languages. And the fifth book, released at midnight on June 20 and published in Britain by Bloomsbury and in this country by Scholastic, is ranked No. 1 on children's books best-seller lists". And how about that one:

"Some publishing industry officials say the electronic Potter piracy may be a perverse sign that the public is finally acquiring a taste for e-books".