And free software tools distributed by commercial e-book publishers like Microsoft and Adobe also make it easy to format and correct errors.Ī 22-year-old university student in Britain, who calls himself Comrade Dave and downloaded ''Phoenix'' recently using software called BitTorrent, said he acquired the first four books the traditional way. That is partly because fast scanners that cost hundreds of dollars a few years ago now come free with many new personal computers. ''It is obvious that the infrastructure to make legal e-books is now so strongly entrenched that people feel empowered to make their own, even when the publishing industry refuses.'' ''I used to joke in my speeches that e-books had not arrived because none of the pirate sites were dedicated to books,'' said Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, which began putting books whose copyrights had expired online 32 years ago and has made nearly 9,000 books freely available. 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. A spokeswoman at Bloomsbury did not return calls last week. 1 on children's books best-seller lists.Ī spokeswoman for Scholastic said no one was available to comment. 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. More than 200 million copies of the first four books have been sold in 55 languages. Blair said he did not expect the illicit e-books to have an impact on sales of the printed book.
''That is obviously what's been happening with peer-to-peer music, but it's not something we've had to deal with before.'' ''What is unusual for us as people who deal with piracy of books is that these are people who are not directly making money for having put them on the Internet,'' said Ian Taylor, international director of the Publishers Association in Britain. There is also Microsoft's fancier LIT format - which requires use of its free e-book reader software and opens in a narrow window that looks a lot like a book, although with hyperlinks to each chapter and the ability to search for terms like Quidditch. The choices include Adobe's ubiquitous PDF and text files that can be opened in a word-processing program.
this series allows my mind to launch a new look on life.Last week, enthusiastic readers put unofficially translated portions of ''Order of the Phoenix'' on the Web in German and Czech, only to remove them after the publishers that own the rights in their respective countries threatened legal action.Įnglish-language copies of the book - along with fan-written stories masquerading as the real thing - are available on all the major file-sharing networks in a variety of file formats. I love Harry Potter, and even as an adult, I am willing to admit that my imagination (MUCH like many other adults) has been at bay for too long.
(Sorry, had to insult the person who could not find any words beside curse-words to state his opinion.) The books, coupled with the movie are every child's and every adult who will admit to still being a child, dream come true, allowing the mind to create a magical world of potions, and creatures, friends and charms, turning staircases and moving photographs.
Or maybe those people just did not understand the big words. Perhaps many of the people who dislike Harry missed the point- to amuse the imaginations and encourage people to open their mind to other types of people and literature. I, myself have read all the available books and never in my life have I had more imaginative dreams or daydreamt more about wondrous other worlds of magic and mystery. Even many adults are drawn to the fascination of the phenomenon. Harry Potter is the epitome of what children's imaginations long for.