It’s cool how blogs enable good content to spread viraly. I don’t often read the L.A.Times and probably wouldn’t have seen this article if it weren’t for a superb blog called QuillBlog from Quill and Quire magazine.

Here it’s necessary to distinguish between the newspaper critics and the cyber crooks, who may have posted sections of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on the Web. That’s theft, and if we don’t protect the intellectual property of even fabulously wealthy creative people like Rowling, they’ll have less and less incentive to produce the things that entertain and delight us. Her publishers are right to go after these looters with laptops with every lawyer they hire.

Embargoes on reviews and discussions are another matter. All the outrage surrounding this particular book notwithstanding, contemporary publishers impose these blackouts not in the interest of readers but to protect the carefully planned publicity campaigns they create for books on which they have advanced large sums of money.

Here’s the original article from TimRutten (has been removed from original location) of the Times and if you can check out the QuillBlog as well.