This article at Wired News theorizes that J. K. Rowling’s refusal to release the new Harry Potter book in an electronic format paved the way for it to be pirated. It says that a reasonably priced e-book would have de-incentivized the people who scanned, OCR’ed and distributed HBP eleven hours after it was released in stores.

I’m not sure I buy that. I bought my copy of HBP late Sunday. My wife left town on a business trip early Monday while I was only about halfway through the book. Rather than make her wait until she came back, I went and downloaded the ripped PDF over BitTorrent. Would I have paid “$5 or $10″ for something I already “owned” in dead-tree format? Doubtful. This was a convenience issue, and since it was so easy, it was the obvious thing to do. I suppose I “pirated” it, but to my mind, having a digital copy of something I’d paid for was legit fair use, but I’d have only do that at no cost.

When will the publishing industry catch up with those on the technical leading edge? Current writers are discovering that a free-and-open approach to their work actually boosts sales and spreads their work far and wide. Not that Harry Potter needs to be spread much further and wider, of course…

Wired News: Pirates of the Potter-ian