An Australian group-buying site owned by Microsoft and Nine sold e-book readers bundled with a treasure trove of thousands of pirated books including the full Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings series.

The matter has prompted a rebuke from the NSW Fair Trading Minister, Anthony Roberts, who claims group-buying sites cannot simply blame vendors when they are caught running dodgy deals.



The book industry has reacted angrily and HarperCollins, publisher of some of the major titles contained on the CD including those by J.R.R Tolkien, said its corporate solicitor ''will be ringing them today''.

A screenshot of the deal page on Cudo.com.au.

The site, Cudo.com.au, this week advertised a $99 e-book reader that came with ''4000 e-books you can load from a CD''. Thousands of people signed up for the deal, but the company claims it discovered the books were pirated before orders were shipped.

Cudo's advertisement originally linked directly to a list of books that came on the bonus CD, and the list contained thousands of books that were still under copyright and available in stores. The site later removed this link from the advertisement, but the original ad is still visible in Google's cache.