Harry Potter, Stolen and Posted on the 'net

For those who don't see the Internet as a destructive force in intellectual property protection, I present this story on how the new Harry Potter book is available on P2P sites, in its entirety. As far as I can tell (because I certainly won't be downloading it), these are simple scans.

Just imagine if (when) books go digital in a big way. Then, authors will have the same concerns as musicians and movie producers. Maybe even bigger problems, because there are no conversion quality issues to contend with. There are just words.

Update: And, here we have Boing Boing excusing the theft, because "the kind of person who downloads a series of photos of the pages of a giant novel is also the kind of person who'll line up and buy a copy the night it comes out." The temerity of the anti-intellectual property crowd astounds me. This is a completely unjustifiable and unprovable assumption, and it's completely irrelevant to the issue of the theft.

The owner of the property is the only person (or people) with the right to determine if, when, and how that property will be made available, at what price and under what terms. That's what ownership of property means. To so blithely dismiss such a theft demonstrates Boing Boing's inherent disdain for the very concept of intellectual property (and, from some of their posts on how to circumvent it, for the law itself).