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."

Comments

and it won't cost them

[geekoid]

a single sale.

Re:and it won't cost them

[Anonymous Coward]

On the contrary,

the publisher and author are claiming losses of 68 trillion US Dollars in US sales alone because of the leak.

They figured the number based on the claims made by software and Music publishers over the past few years.

Unfortunately now, every man woman and child in the UK will now have no electricity, heat, water or spicy food for 15 years because of this. The economic destruction that it will cause will probably bring the roman empire back to london, Make all beer taste sour, and disrupt peace in the middle east.

See how damaging Piracy is!! SEE!

heh

[grub]

Crappy cam quality. Can't they telesync a book nowadays?
Oh wait...

And who saw that ending coming?

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean... Harry Potter is Luke Skywalker's father?!

Re:And who saw that ending coming?

[harlows_monkeys]

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.

Uberspoiler at bayimg.com

[viking80]

http://bayimg.com/jadhAAABp

How do we know?

[SEWilco]

How do we know it was done with a handheld camera? Looks like magic to me.

Re:Sigh...

[magarity]

but bit torrent downloads can be tracked
 
You mean one of your neighbors isn't running a open WAP, er, I mean 'torrent anonymizer'?

The hands.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have slept with J.K. Rowling, and I can state, with absolute certainty, that those are her hands. They are absolutely unmistakable, so the woman has leaked her own book. Way to drum up interest!

Re:I'll wait until the 21st

[geekoid]

"I've waited this long, have the day off work and the fridge stocked with spcied wine."

ok, you are the biggest dork, you win.

Re:Unexpectedly ruined?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, somebody MADE you read the spoilers?

When trolls post it in the middle of a batch of comments with a deceptive title? I didn't exactly seek out spoilers. It wasn't a Harry Potter related post even.

I will never understand...

[rhiafaery]

...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.

** SPOILER ALERT **

[coren2000]

Harry is gay.... ... and proud.

Serial numbers intact!

[jdberry]

I hear the perp left his Canon's serial number in the Exif data for each picture. I wonder if he registered the camera? Will Canon protect his privacy? ;)

Re:Unexpectedly ruined?

[scott_karana]

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

In other Harry Potter news...

[toby]

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.

Pirateer

[Le Marteau]

On many pages the pirateer's hands are in the pictures

Perhaps you mean 'pirate'? 'Pirateer' is not a word ('privateer' is, of course, a word, but clearly not meant here).

Re:Are you a complete cheapskate?

[muuh-gnu]

> What's wrong with waiting a whole four days and then buying the book yourself?

The buying.

> Or, waiting a few days longer and borrowing a used copy from a friend?

The waiting.

> Or, waiting a few days longer and buying a used copy via eBay?

The buying.

> Or, borrowing a copy from your local library when they have it?

The waiting.

And The Last Line Is....

[hemorex]

"Harry Potter, do you want your possessions identified? (y/n/q)"