There was a seller on ebay who was contacted by a journalist (who said that he declined to be interviewed) who posed as the publisher. The information was provided to the publisher by the retailer.
It would not suprise me in the least that the vendor or publisher strong armed the USPS to track down the early distributed copies.
RIAA performs FBI style raids on flea markets without a court order.
The entertainment industry acts as their own police force.
No sooner had I clocked a couple of hours of vacation time to make up for my Potter errand-running than my desk phone rang. A pleasant-sounding woman introduced herself as being with Scholastic Books, and my jaw hit the desk at something approaching supersonic speed. She said, “We understand you have received a copy of the new Harry Potter book from DeepDiscount.com, are you a Harry Potter fan?”To say that I freaked would be a bit of an understatement. My desk phone number isn’t published anywhere — how the hell did they find me? I hung up without responding, and now I regret it. I should have at least chatted with her.
After I’ve had a chance to think about it, I assume now that DeepDiscount was pressured into turning over contact information on the people who received early copies of Hallows. At least that’s my best guess — I’m not discounting the possibility that Ms. Rowling did a little conjuring when she heard about the eBay ad.
The newspaper pictures were what really set off the firestorm this afternoon. After I’d provided proof that I actually had the book, today, the e-mails started flying: questions about shipping and questions about whether I were actually a minion of the Dark Lord ran about 50-50 each. By about 2 P.M., the ad got its first bid, for $123. A few minutes later, my e-mail buzzed again with the notice that the “Buy It Now” had been accepted for $250 plus shipping.
I’m not ashamed to say that I blurted out, “CHING!” To my great amusement, I soon found out that the buyer was Robin Lenz, the managing editor of Publisher’s Weekly. According to an e-mail from Lenz, “I'm the person who shelled out the big bucks for you early copy of Harry Potter. I'm an editor at Publishers Weekly and we're writing an article on early shipping, the embargo, spoilers, etc. —this is huge news in the publishing industry. (and if there's is any way you could ship it today, I'd pay extra).”
Well, this was great stuff. Not only did I make a very nice profit, I got the best of all possible outcomes: Instead of taking a desperate Harry Potter fan to the cleaners, I got to fleece a media organization. I will sleep with a profoundly clean conscience.
The story wasn’t quite over after I dropped the book off at FedEx, of course. The Associated Press ran a story about the book’s release, noted my ad, and falsely claimed that I’d declined to respond to a query. That’s a lie: Even as I write this an hour or so after the AP’s story, I have not been contacted by them in any way—and if they actually try they’re going to get hung up on; lie about me and you lose interview rights.
The publisher can request or even pressure the USPS to attempt to get the book back, but the USPS is not going to threaten a carrier's job for a publisher's mistake. If a supervisor was foolish enough to do so the carriers union would become involved - to that supervisor's detriment, and rightfully so.