[Infowarrior] - New Harry Potter Book Makes Its Way to the Web

[Richard Forno]

July 17, 2007
New Harry Potter Book Makes Its Way to the Web
By MOTOKO RICH
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/17/books/17cnd-potter.html?_r=1&hp=&oref=slog
in&pagewanted=print

Photos of what appeared to be every page of ³Harry Potter and the Deathly
Hallows,² the breathlessly awaited seventh and final installment in the
wildly popular series by J.K. Rowling, were circulating around the Web
today, potentially upsetting the most elaborate marketing machine ever
mobilized for a book.

Various file-sharing Web sites were carrying what looked like amateur
photographs of each pair of facing pages of the book, which officially goes
on sale at 12:01 a.m. Saturday morning. The pictures show the book laid out
on a green and red-flecked looped carpet with somebody¹s fingers holding it
open. Some of the photos make the text difficult to read, but the ending is
definitely legible.

Kyle Good, a spokeswoman for Scholastic, the book¹s United States publisher,
said that she was aware of at least three different versions of the file
³that look very convincing² with what she described as ³conflicting
content.²

In a court filing on Monday, Scholastic sought ³materials hosted on
Photobucket.com¹s system² that it said might violate the book¹s copyright,
Bloomberg News reported today. Photobucket is a unit of the News
Corporation.

In addition, Bloomberg said, Scholastic sent a subpoena to Gaia Interactive
in San Jose asking the identity of someone who had posted a copy of the book
on Gaia¹s social networking Web site, gaiaonline.com. A spokesman for Gaia
told Bloomberg that it had complied with the subpoena, turned the name over
to Scholastic, removed the material and banned the user from the site.

In Britain, where the book is published by Bloomsbury, Sarah Beal, a
spokeswoman, said: ³We are encouraging people not to do this. This happens
with every book, and there are a lot of them out there, and we appeal to
everybody not to put them up. It¹s amazing how creative people can be. It
may look real, but it doesn¹t mean they are.²

Hype and frenzy have been building for weeks, as readers anticipate the
release of the final book, in which Ms. Rowling has hinted that two or more
characters are likely to die, leading to speculation from many fans that
Harry might not survive his own series. Fans have been guessing about other
important plot points, as well, such as who will end up with whom, or
whether Professor Severus Snape, a character whose moral character has been
in question, is genuinely evil.

Bookstores across the country are gearing up for festivities Friday night
and are expecting long lines of readers who want to get their hands on a
copy, which comes out in hardcover. Scholastic is publishing a
record-setting print run of 12 million copies.