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Old-Fashioned DRM Protects Harry Potter Book
RMX writes "The Telegraph has a nice article
about the steps that Scholastic is taking to
protect the content of the print version of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. They're delivering 10.8 million copies and need to ensure that this content isn't accessable by anyone before midnight. Technology includes high-tech (GPS to monitor delivery trucks progress and check that they did not deviate or stop.), low-tech (steel boxes & locks), social engineering notes (crates stacked up in the warehouses of delivery companies across America are marked: Please Do Not Open Before Midnight), and legal threats (As a final layer of security, booksellers have been forced to sign legal forms acknowledging that if they break the embargo, they will never again be supplied with a book by Scholastic). Think how much cheaper and easier it would be if they just used an E-book s with DRM.
I'm all for Harry Potter protecting his rights; but it seems we keep getting closer and closer to the world described in
Stallman's visionary The Right To Read article."
Tell that to the fundamentalists who burn Harry Potter books and try to get them banned from school and public libraries. Witchcraft and wizardry are prohibited by scripture, and the Harry Potter series paints such occult pursuits not only in a positive light, but places people who practice these evil arts in the role of hero and role model.
I'm not saying I agree with that point of view. But in some people's minds, Harry Potter is closer to Satan's Bible than you may realize.
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
Scholastic isn't trying to take away anybodies rights here. This is common practice in competitive markets for big title releases. For example: Barnes & Noble manages to release the new book 2 days earlier than anybody else. What happens? Since B&N only has a limitied quantity and demand is so high, they quickly sell all their stock and make a bundle. This would be good for B&N, but it would hurt every other bookstore in the market, thus being an unfair practice. This isn't new. Just look at how strict video game releases are.
Steal This Sig
I think what they mean is that empty crates have been marked "Do Not Open before Midnight" so that a miscreant will be go for those crates first. It is a classic social engineering technique. Like putting out a junk laptop in the view of a theif that says "important data" so he will run off with that one and not go for where the data really is (the server.) I do agree that it is not really digital rights management, but nonetheless, GPS is digital. ;)
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This has now been officially declared to be the most stupid article ever posted on slashdot.
Nothing, when it's done ethically and legally. The original thread seems to touch on the ignorance of the publishers over DRM. I can definitely add to that perspective.
Last year, I received a DMCA complaint passed from our ISP's upstream provider. The complaint originated from the Harry Potter publishers, and was in reference to a filename that was similar to a Harry Potter audio recording, being observed to be downloaded from a P2P site by the publisher's surveillance. The publisher not only took a significant leap of faith in assuming all files of the same rather common name shared over P2P were the same as their file, but made numerous legal errors showing complete disregard for the DMCA, including:
Fortunately, our relationship with the upstream was strong enough to allow me to have a brief discussion with their general manager (after a clerical person ignored DMCA provisions in the haste caused by the publisher's threats). I didn't even have to have counsel on the phone, though a nice follow-up letter reminding this large company of their responsibilities under the law was sent on counsel's letterhead.
Should you ever be in this situation, make sure you understand the DMCA and its requirements (you need to do some planning and preparation before these situations in order to be protected). Make sure you have an attorney from a reputable firm available before hand as well (we do most of our day-to-day with smaller, more affordable firms, but I have one large firm ready to deal with threats of this sort). More importantly, I've refused to allow my son to buy any more Harry Potter material. Though I'm certain they won't miss our money, I refuse to patronize one of the worst offenders of DMCA bullying.
You said falmed!!!
I like my women how I like my sugar.. granulated.
I wonder if something like that could be pulled off
It was pulled off last time. Not 15 minutes, yes, but four hours. Four hours after the book was first sold, it was available on the net, because of a predetermined set of "volunteers", who each scanned, OCRd and proofread one chapter.
I'm expecting a similar thing to happen this time, only sooner than four hours.
There was an insident in Finland where (young) fans would translate the english version in a group effort where each one of them would translate a small section and then they did combine their efforts by posting it to a forum.
Well as you probably guessed the people doing the official translation were not amused but it just shows how much can be done with a bit of group effort.
WRITTEN GUIDELINES FOR BOOKSELLERS
:
Dear Bookseller,
Now that Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is arriving or has already arrived in your warehouses and stores, and especially with the weekend before the release upon us, we want to ask your continued vigilance in maintaining the highest level of security around the books. We do not want any "spoilers" to change the readers' experience of the new book!
We ask that you confirm that all procedures are in place and, in particular, that the following steps are implemented
* Insure the product is segregated from all other stock
* Insure all security measures are in place in all stages of the process, and that access to the product and processing areas are appropriately restricted
* Insure your entire staff is aware of the restrictions that are in place
* Particularly over the weekend, insure appropriate staff, including security personnel, are on site
* We recommend you implement, if you haven't already, the following in the secured staging areas and communicate this to your employees: no cell phones or recording devices and no lunch boxes or coolers, only clear bags
* Please contact us prior to any communication with the media or other third parties, concerning your operations and security
We greatly appreciate your cooperation and look forward to a successful launch of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince on July 16th for all booksellers!
Sincerely,
Scholastic Sales Management
meh
Amazon and B&N have it for $18 for 672 pages (list price is $30). That's a pretty common price for a large hardbound novel.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
I'm too lazy to read 313 comments to see if it's been mentioned already, but to the best of my knowledge Scolastic is not allowed to discontinue future distribution through a store based on a break in the street date. I used to work at a Target store and we had street dated material every week. If we broke it they are allowed to fine us obscene amounts of money ($5000 per copy of Windows XP sold before release date etc etc) but it was explicitly stated in the corprate material concerning new releases that they are not granted right to deny us future releases either in timing or quantity.
Fascism, as I undestand it, is a union between corporate and state power, and usually includes a leader cult and racist social policy. It also has no qualms about spreading itself via military conquest.