Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pages Posted Online

Posted on July 17, 2007

Some lowlife posted scans of the new Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on the file-sharing site, Gaiaonline.com. Scholastic got a subpoena, threatened everyone in sight, and got the scans pulled. But reports say that the ending was clearly visible.

Photos of what appeared to be every page of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, 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 somebody's 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 book's United States publisher, said that she was aware of at least three different versions of the file "that look very convincing" with what she described as "conflicting content." In a court filing on Monday, Scholastic sought "materials hosted on Photobucket.com's system" that it said might violate the book's 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 Gaia's 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.

Throw the book at the perpetrator, that's what we say. We don't want to hear one spoiler. We're determined to remain spoiler-free until our book arrives Saturday. We can't wait.

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