Scholastic Loses It Over Harry Potter/BitTorent Story

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July 18, 2007

It didn’t take long for Scholastic, the U.S. publisher of the Harry Potter books, to send us a takedown notice for our post “The Latest Harry Potter Book Hits BitTorrent.”

In an email yesterday, Mark S. Seidenfeld, an attorney for Scholastic, demanded that we “act expeditiously to remove or disable access to the material or items claimed to be infringing” and referred to the post. The full text of the notice is below. A print article in USA Today says that they are contacting every site that has mentioned this story and demanding it be taken down.

There is a vague possibility that we could be found liable of contributory infringement, our attorney says. As could USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and CNN who, among many others, mentioned that the book was available on The Pirate Bay (but without linking).

But really this is just a bullying (albeit very polite bullying) tactic by the publisher to try to stop word spreading that the book, like almost all popular media today, is available free on BitTorrent for those who choose to steal it. They’re trying to shoot the messenger, and this kind of stuff has a chilling effect on free speech. If they want to bring legal action against us, ok. But we’ll fight back, and the entire drama will be posted for everyone to follow.

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