Harry Potter Gets Scribd.

The bar exam is kaput, and I have rejoined the land of the living after a drearily monastic summer. Unfortunately, JK Rowling had to add insult to injury by releasing the final Harry Potter book 3 days before the bar exam. This was quite a dilemma for me, because I have been waiting for some closure in Harry's life for about 7 years, and I am one of those unfortunate people who needs to know how stories end before I see them.

The end result was that I found myself last Thursday night scouring the web for Harry Potter spoilers so I could continue studying in peace. I learned quickly that a copy had leaked and someone with a very clear calendar had taken a photo of each page of the book and posted it online. Upon some further investigative research, I stumbled upon Scribd, a website that caught TechCrunch's eye some time ago, which has been billed as the YouTube for documents. Apparently another person with very little to do had transcribed the ENTIRE book from the photos and posted it on Scribd days before its official release. I was able to return to studying now that I knew who laughed and who cried, and more importantly, who lived and who died.

Scribd is inevitably (unwillingly?) following in YouTube's footsteps as a haven for copyright infringement. Apparently, certain people are scanning in magazines with photos as well. The website makes it remarkably easy to download any document you find in either Word or PDF format.

If you have a moment, go to www.scribd.com and type in names like "Stephen King" or "John Grisham." You would be surprised how many books pop up. You would be even more surprised as to how many infringing copies are listed in other languages (international copyright issues, anyone?) If Sony's Reader ever gets off the ground and people stop lugging around books and start having these electronic readers the situation will get much worse. Early leaks of books would have the same effect as early leaks of albums.

Where does Scribd find itself? Hiding behind the same legal protection of the DMCA Safe Harbors as its cousin YouTube. At some point we either need to reevaluate the Safe Harbors, or perhaps technology will come and save the day again with filters to prevent piracy.

On a side-note, this reaffirms my professor's contention that Microsoft Word might be the single greatest instrument of copyright infringement ever.

Summer Hiatus

While I should have posted this a long time ago, I just wanted to announce that the blog is on hiatus for the summer as I prepare for the bar exam. As there have been no reported fatalities from the bar, I am confident that I will be able to pick things back up come September, once I have nursed myself back to health. Luckily, BarBri was worth every penny, though at times it was about as invigorating as water torture.