Prosecuting fans who translate Harry Potter

August 9th, 2007 - 00:15 | 4 comments

Apparently the French version of Deathly Hallows won’t be available until late October. It’s a shame the publishers couldn’t arrange simultaneous releases, but I’m prepared to accept that’s a massive undertaking. Nevertheless, it must suck to know half the world has already read a novel you’re eagerly awaiting. As a result, some fans have quickly released their own translations. Bloomsbury aren’t happy.

I appreciate that J.K. Rowling / Bloomsbury have the intellectual property rights to Harry Potter. I appreciate that, flawed as the copyright system may be, the underlying concept of creators’ rights is just. But when a kid loves a novel enough to translate it into another language, for no commercial gain, prosecuting him seems a bit much. I can’t, off the top of my head, think of a realistic legal setup whereby the translations could be pulled but the kid not be guilty of anything. But it feels wrong.

Incidentally, anyone who’s finished the book might find this amusing. Don’t click if you haven’t.

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4 Responses to “Prosecuting fans who translate Harry Potter”

1 Shawn Aug 9th, 2007 at 3:14 am

What was done was wrong. Some level of punishment should be handed out. OK J.K. is richer than the queen and the potential loss of French sales won’t hurt her but put it at the other end of the series. What if this had happened with volume one? Those lost sales would have hurt her. Say the series had just been a cult hit with only sales in the thousands or 10s of thousands? Enough to keep the publisher interested but where losing a few hundred sales might make a difference.
2 Andrew Aug 9th, 2007 at 11:21 am

I agree. I didn’t mean to imply it’s excusable. It’s just a bizarre system where a language barrier prevents access to information already ‘out there’, and people willing to help with this process are prosecuted by the publishers, rather than embraced. Not that his translation was necessarily up to scratch, but was nevertheless completed in a few days.
3 Ed Aug 11th, 2007 at 9:56 pm

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v442/iftk/06/49503527.jpg
4 Andrew Aug 11th, 2007 at 11:03 pm

Awesome.

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