Photographed pages of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" were flooding popular BitTorrent search engine sites days ahead of the book's official publication date. Although some of these photos were barely readable, it didn't stop DSB, an e-book pirates group, to type out (i.e. transcribe) the full thing in less than 48 hours after the initial leak and to release it in readable e-book formats. MobileRead had a chat with one of the leaders of DSB.
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Hello DSB. How many people where involved in OCRing and proofreading the leaked photo images?
DSB originally had seven members who worked on releasing the first 10 chapters of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows". After that, we sent an email asking people for help. I really don't know how many people helped in total, but about 100-150 volunteered. Of these, maybe 10-15 actually ended up helping.
What hardware and software did you use?
Just our day-to-day computers (i.e. nothing special) with an image reader software, and occasionally Adobe Photoshop to enhance/sharpen the leaked images. No OCR software was used, it was all rewritten. We tried for a while to use OCR, but it just wouldn't read the images.
Perhaps OCR will improve one day with the launch of Google's OCRopus project. Last year, the e-book of "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" was released in about 12 hours after the hardcover release. How long did it take you in total?
We started Monday morning and by Tuesday night we had our first 10 chapters done. We only worked for about 8-9 hours a day. After that, we received much more help and got the remaining 26 chapters plus epilogue done by Thursday morning and finally released it on Thursday afternoon.
And what was the original idea of scanning "Deathly Hallows"?
Well, we didn't scan it. We transcribed it. We all wanted to read it but hated those horrible pictures because they were killing our eyes. We decided that if each one of us takes a chapter from 1-10, we could all read the book in a nice format and only put in a little work. From there on we decided it wasn't right to keep this to ourselves. We wanted to keep the release within the group but realized we wouldn't be able to finish in time if we only had our 7 people.
Let's talk about the e-book scene. What attracted you to it?
See above.
We hear a lot about the 0-day and the movie scene. Is there a connection to the e-book scene? Is the e-book scene structured in similar ways (eg. with competiting release groups)?
Well, I'm not really part of any other group and this was our first and maybe only release. There was, however, competition. After our 10-chapter release, another group released chapters 11-21 soon after. A couple of hours after them we released the entire book.
Aren't you afraid of getting in trouble should publishers take aim - like RIAA and MPAA have done for the movie and record industries?
Sure we're afraid, but we think we've taken enough preventative measures as to not get caught.
Well, the person who shot the original photos included the EXIF-data of his camera along with its serial number. Do you think they will eventually track him down? Should he worry?
I don't think he should worry all that much; unless he registered his camera, there's no way - as far as I know - to track him down. Furthermore even if he did register his camera, he could have just "sold it", "broke it" or "lost it" years ago, and what proof would anyone have otherwise. Regardless though, if he did register his camera and if he is a librarian responsible for keeping the Harry Potter books secure then he may be in some trouble.
Where do you see e-books in 12 months from now?
I don't think they'll be much if any different than they are now.
What would you say to JK Rowling if you had the chance?
I would tell her, thank you for making a great book which has actually made so many people read. I'd also tell her that I'm disappointed in how the last two chapters ended and that I don't understand why she had to make this a children's book with a fairy-tale ending. Finally, I'd like to tell her that the leaks didn't kill her book sales at all, and that she - along with her publishers - shouldn't worry about piracy of the Harry Potter books; people will buy them regardless of whether or not they can read them for free. I know I did.
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Disclaimer: We at MobileRead obviously don't support the distribution of pirated books. Despite the leak, as of today, Monday 30th July, "Deathly Hallows" remains at No. 1 on the best-seller lists of Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com.
Related: Pirate Bay and the Torrent on Fire,
Harry Potter 6 e-book already being pirated!