NON-FICTION TALEHave you heard the true tale of the 16 year old French lad who painstakingly translated (from English into French) all 759 pages of the new Harry Potter book (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows) in record-breaking time and within days of its July 21st release date, and then posted it online? If so you know that this time-consuming task landed him in jail and also facing serious charges of intellectual property violation.
Now what he did, of course, was illegal but the smart, swift French high-schooler is hardly a hardened criminal. And it is important to note that he was not trying to make any money off the book or receive any kind of payment for his intense, time-consuming job of translating an entire book. One reason why it is seems crazy to me to go after this young individual is because anyone who is going to read an entire book online (which is a pain in the ass - most people only read one page online before tiring of starting at their computer screens) is obviously too cheap to buy it in the first place and secondly because if you were to print out all 759 pages you would end up spending more on ink cartridges and paper than if you were to go buy the book itself at the store.
And if you read it online so as to know the story ending before it was published and available in stores - then you are such a diehard Harry Potter fan that you will - undoubtedly -have to later buy a copy of the book to own. It is just like the music file downloaders who, while download like crazy, also purchase the most music online.
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I'm torn on this issue. Sure, he's a genious and what he did was incredible. But, I'm not even a Potter fan and hearing about people leaking the book onto the internet made me really mad. All it takes is one person to ruin the end of an epic series for a lot of people, and that's not cool. I know a lot of fans who were trying to avoid spoilers like the plague because of these guys, and there will always be those jerks who download the book before the release date just so they can leak it onto the internet and get some sort of sick satisfaction over it. But it's not like J.K. Rowling (in the dough) lost any money over it, so maybe he should have just gotten a slap on the wrist and a warning from Lord Voldemort.