Quote:
Originally Posted by binaryhermit
I mean, wasn't there a digital copy of one of the Harry Potter books before the text's official release date via someone getting their hands on a paper copy, taking a picture of every page, uploading the pictures to the internet, and the internet doing their thing?
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Yes. Possibly one book even from a proof copy!
Very many pirate ebooks are from paper ARCs (Advance Review Copies). Just as HDCP on HDMI and DRM on DVD & BD is wasting consumer money.
Point camera at a decent TV in a dark room. But many pirate videos before decent flat screen TVs and cheap 4K cameras were pirated from the actual studio or in a projection booth in a cinema.
You can pirate a book by industrial cut off binding and ADF. Or automated page turning on a Kindle PW3 (cheap robot finger out of Lego) and a phone camera. Then OCR. Though some just publish the image based PDF. Used to be rife on Google Playstore. But plenty of "free" sites too.