‘Harry Potter’ publisher gets subpoena to identify pirate

Scholastic Corp., publisher of the new “Harry Potter” book, obtained a subpoena to learn the identity of a user who allegedly posted copies of the final sequel, scheduled for release Saturday, on a California website.

Scholastic said in a court filing Monday that “materials hosted on Photobucket.com’s system” contain materials that infringe copyrights owned by Scholastic and J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books. Photobucket.com, a News Corp. unit, is a website for sharing photos and videos on social networks such as MySpace.

The subpoena was sent to Gaia Interactive Inc. in San Jose seeking the identity of a user on gaiaonline.com, a social network, according to the filing in San Francisco federal court.

Gaia complied with the subpoena, removed the material and temporarily banned the user from the site, said Gaia spokesman Bill Danon. The postings included scanned material and a discussion of the material, he said.