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Harry Potter Leaked Via Handheld Camera

owlgorithm writes "Salon reports that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows has been leaked four days before it hits bookstores. It turns out that someone with access to the American edition of the book has taken a photograph of every one of the pages and made them available via bittorrent. Publishers may well be quaking in their boots, but in some places the quality is barely legible. On many pages the pirateer's hands are in the pictures with other pages needing a bit of Photoshopping just to make out the words. It appears many of the sites have been removing the content, naturally enough."

5 of 427 comments (clear)

  1. and it won't cost them by geekoid · · Score: 5, Insightful

    a single sale.

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    The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
  2. I will never understand... by rhiafaery · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...what possible perverse pleasure anyone could get out of spoiling something wonderful for other people. I sometimes go looking for spoilers, but for something I am really, really looking forward to, I won't do it. I LIKE to anticipate, be surprised, feel the "magic," however you wish to put it. I know, so don't look, but I just can't help feeling sorry for people who walk through life with all the wonder ripped out, and feel that everyone else deserves to have theirs ripped out, as well. Whatever anyone thinks of Harry Potter, anything that encourages reading, imagination, excitement, and wonder is something worth preserving intact.

    I have a Sorting Hat replica I won from hollywood.com years ago, and yes, I will be wearing it to the midnight Harry Potter party, looking ridiculous, embarrassing my kids, and loving every minute of it. LoL. Enjoy life, you only go around once.

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    "I am treated as evil by those who feel persecuted because they are not allowed to force me to believe as they do."
  3. Re:Unexpectedly ruined? by scott_karana · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You don't know they're spoilers until you read them, hence "unexpected".
    Christ. Pedants.

  4. In other Harry Potter news... by toby · · Score: 5, Insightful

    An Insightful Guardian columnist has finally come out and said what literate people have known all along. J.K. Rowling's writing is RUBBISH.

    ... I don't think I'm going out on a limb here. Of course, if she has turned into a first-class writer with her forthcoming Potter book, I will happily, no, joyously, eat my words.

    But until then, we have to swallow hers. ...

    ... Do I need to explain why that is such second-rate writing?

    If I do, then that means you're one of the many adults who don't have a problem with the retreat into infantilism that your willing immersion in the Potter books represents. It doesn't make you a bad or silly person. But if you have the patience to read it without noticing how plodding it is, then you are self-evidently someone on whom the possibilities of the English language are largely lost.

    This is the kind of prose that reasonably intelligent nine-year-olds consider pretty hot stuff, if they're producing it themselves; for a highly-educated woman like Rowling to knock out the same kind of material is, shall we say, somewhat disappointing.

    (If you find that revelation shocking, just don't ask about Dan Brown, ok?)

    Predictably, a chorus of twit commenters felt driven to argue that the Potter Phenomenon's sheer Scale and Success makes it self-evidently Valuable to Society (much like B. Gates must be an Important and Clever Person because he's Really Rich.) Uh-uh. Crappy writing is not good for anyone, just like crappy food (this may also come as a surprise to some), and on this point I agree wholeheartedly with Mr Lezard:

    Children exposed to this kind of writing aren't learning anything new about words, or being stretched in any way; as Harold Bloom said, they're not going to be inspired to go off and read the Alice books, or any other enduring classic.

    All the Potter franchise does, like 99% of TV and Hollywood output, is entrench the hold of pointless and mediocre culture. The only thing unusual this time, is it's Made in Britain.

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    you had me at #!
  5. Re:And who saw that ending coming? by harlows_monkeys · · Score: 5, Insightful
    That raises an interesting question. Is the Vader thing still a spoiler?

    On the one hand, it's something like 20 years old.

    On the other hand, the Star Wars movies have become pop classics, and cultural icons. Thus, it is safe to assume that many people of each generation will want to watch them, and so we should try not to spoil it.

    But wait...what order will they watch them? If they start with TPM, then they are going to already know about Vader when they get to the "I am your father" scene. It is no spoiler.

    However, many of them will be lucky enough to have someone tell them the right way to watch the movies. (Start with ANH, and go forward until "I am your father", then gosub to TPM, AotC, and RotS to get the story behind Vader, then return and finish the series). It would be a spoiler for these people.

    I think the Harry Potter books and/or films might end up in a similar position.

    The rule should probably be that for any story (whether book, movie, comic, erotic flip book, whatever), you don't give away story details that might be spoilers unless you are sure you have an audience that already knows, or won't care.