Harry Potter and the IP Leak

At the same time that moviegoers are heading to the theaters to see the fifth Harry Potter film (to the tune of $140 million in U.S. ticket sales in the first five days, according to The New York Times), media outlets and bloggers have been reporting that J.K. Rowling's final installment in the popular series, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," has been illegally posted online. While it's still unclear if the material found online is fake or pirated from the actual book, set to be released in stores on July 21, J.K. Rowling and her publisher Scholastic Inc. are clearly miffed at the idea of any of their copyrighted material being leaked online.

In fact, the Techcrunch blog received a takedown notice from one of Scholastic's lawyers yesterday in response to a post it had written about the copyrighted material being available online.