Mrs. Rowling is having her own readers/admirers sent to jail for liking her books too much and wanting to share her "beautiful" (so to speak) prose with other teenagers who cannot read English, but can read French.
The story is simply told. At light speed, and apparently with extreme accuracy, a 16 year old French high school student translated Rowling's last volume in French and posted his high quality translation on the web, for free.
They had him arrested "to protect copyrights and to avoid innocent fans being duped." Yup, that's exactly what Rowling's agent said. The kid was then released and it is unclear if they are pressing charges against him or not. The translation is gone, obviously.
Gallimard will come out with its translation in a few months ... a 16 year old Lycée student is apparently more efficient than them. That's what you get with a high quality Lycée system!
I wrote a paper on fansubbers -- those that translate, subtitle and encode video/films for distribution on the internet. Groups of fans of Japanese animation get together and collaborate over the internet to create what can even be a better version that the licensed distribution version. Some of them -- speedsubbers -- even produce the subtitled shows within hours of it airing on TV in Japan. See "
Of Otakus and Fansubs: A Critical Look at Anime Online in Light of Current Issues in Copyright Law".
