Really, free books for you
Speaking of ethics and intellectual property rights...
Turns out that thanks to the Internet, the new Harry Potter book has already been pirated. See, J.K. Rowling has for years forbid the creation of an eBook for her massively popular series, which is, I suppose, her right as the creator of the series and all that.
But it only took a few hours after the midnight release of Harry Potter 6 for copies to have been scanned with OCR readers and shared on IRC channels (man, that takes me back).
What impresses me most about this project isn't that it was done at all--if there's a way to get something for free, the Internet will eventually provide it--but the worldwide coordination of the folks who managed this project. It took 11 hours for all 672 pages of this book to be scanned, and now, nearly a week later, it's widely available in any format you'd like.
When I got on the bus the Monday after the book was released, at least half a dozen people were reading it, including myself. Thankfully, I finished it that afternoon so I didn't have to cart it around for another day. But man, now I wished I'd just grabbed a word file and put it in my PDA; even if it was a lot shorter than the last one, I still didn't relish carting that book around and trying to read it in the tiny space afforded me by the large man who sat next to me on the bus.
Turns out that thanks to the Internet, the new Harry Potter book has already been pirated. See, J.K. Rowling has for years forbid the creation of an eBook for her massively popular series, which is, I suppose, her right as the creator of the series and all that.
But it only took a few hours after the midnight release of Harry Potter 6 for copies to have been scanned with OCR readers and shared on IRC channels (man, that takes me back).
What impresses me most about this project isn't that it was done at all--if there's a way to get something for free, the Internet will eventually provide it--but the worldwide coordination of the folks who managed this project. It took 11 hours for all 672 pages of this book to be scanned, and now, nearly a week later, it's widely available in any format you'd like.
When I got on the bus the Monday after the book was released, at least half a dozen people were reading it, including myself. Thankfully, I finished it that afternoon so I didn't have to cart it around for another day. But man, now I wished I'd just grabbed a word file and put it in my PDA; even if it was a lot shorter than the last one, I still didn't relish carting that book around and trying to read it in the tiny space afforded me by the large man who sat next to me on the bus.
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