Harry Potter and the Internet Pirate

In today's society piracy is rampant. With access to the internet we also get access to movies, music, books, and just about anything else we want that can be seen or heard through a computer. Though intellectual piracy is not a new concept, it is done in different ways than it was in the past few centuries.

In the Johns article we read about the dispute between Tycho Brahe and Nicolai Reymers Baer on who first made certain astronomical observations. It came down to one accusing the other of plagiarism. This sort of thing could happen quite easily due to how slow information traveled. If one of them received a copy of the other's work, they could easily reprint it with their name on it and claim it theirs. This is very different in today's society. Authors now-a-days tend to copyright everything they can that is related to the story they wish to tell or the information they wish to convey. It is rare for there to be a dispute about who was the original author (though they do happen on occasion). The problem authors have now is not other people claiming the work as their own, but distributing it without their consent. It would take any internet literate person about 30 seconds to find a copy of just about any popular book that has came out in the last 50 years. There is also a problem with books being leaked to the public before they are meant to be. There was a big deal a few years back of someone copying down the new Harry Potter and posting it on-line before the release. This release ended up being a fake.

Before the advent of the printing press fixity was a very hard thing to maintain. After making a copy of a copy of a copy, you don't know exactly how accurate your version is from the source. Since the printing press was invented, documents could be easily copied exactly raising the level of fixity from copy to copy. Since remediation is so prevalent in our time, it is hard to believe that there is any difference in the book we read from the author's original words.

Although intellectual piracy is still around today, it has changed its shape. It no longer pens books in other authors' names, but instead distributes the books for free and it no longer is a mystery as to who the original author is. Times have changed and so has piracy.

Although it's not common in Western cultures, it seems to be popular in China to write your own bootleg books to take advantage of a popular franchise.