July
18
Harry Potter Update: First Deathly Hallows Review
First, despite all efforts to control the release of Deathly Hallows, at least one Muggle got an early copy, reports The Baltimore Sun:
And in Maryland, one surprised customer opened his mail to find his own copy -- delivered four days before the official worldwide release. Jon Hopkins, a 25-year-old software engineer, said he has no plans to divulge the book's secrets."I couldn't believe it," he said yesterday after Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows arrived at his Davidsonville home. He had ordered the book from DeepDiscount.com on June 3. On Friday, he received an e-mail saying his order had been shipped. He never thought it would come this early.
Neither did Scholastic Inc., the Potter publisher. Scholastic has cracked down on Web sites purporting to have obtained the book, going so far as to send one a subpoena. Libraries were made to sign strict contracts to keep the book locked up until Saturday. And pallets of the books on delivery trucks have been fitted with alarms.
So the publisher wasn't happy to hear of the case of Harry Potter and the Early Delivery.
"You're kidding me," said Kyle Good, a Scholastic spokeswoman. The company has spent millions orchestrating the launch of the last Potter book -- and Internet leaks or early delivery of the novel could spoil that plan. Readers are eager to learn what happens to their beloved characters. Author J.K. Rowling has hinted that one or more of them might die, perhaps even Harry himself..
Maybe there was a mail diversion to Baltimore, because The Sun's book reviewer also got an early copy and posted the book's first review today. That website should get a healthy spike in traffic! UPDATE: And here's Michiko Kakutani in the NYT.
Meanwhile, watchdog the National Legal and Policy Center continues to pursue movie pirates far and wide, and discovered downloads of Transformers and Order of the Phoenix available on Google Video Wednesday. (Both films have been taken down.)
"Continuing to expose blockbuster films posted in advance of their release or while they’re still in theatres, NLPC hopes to spotlight Google’s ostensible oversight of intellectual property rights and its lackluster enforcement of its 'hash' technology that prevents repeated uploads of the same copyrighted material," wrote a company representative.
Meanwhile MPAA chairman and CEO Dan Glickman is also on the warpath against pirates: “Reports on the theft of the latest installment of Harry Potter underscores that robbery of intellectual property extends far beyond the movies, to music, publishing, computer software and other creative outputs that are the foundation of our modern information economy," he wrote in a statement.
“Intellectual property industries together account for nearly thirteen percent of all U.S. economic growth. We simply cannot afford to leave these very serious crimes unchecked. The cost to the world film community alone exceeds $18 billion annually. That is a significant loss in terms of jobs and economic benefits. Government, law enforcement, technology and entertainment leaders have a responsibility to work together to prevent individuals from erasing with the click of a mouse, the time, investment, creativity and heart put into these products. Intellectual property theft is an act with serious consequences for our economy and our information society.”
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This book must be great fun for Potter lovers, because they can see their favorite hero to grow into his best and funniest age.
Posted by: Doro loves pictures | July 18, 2007 at 02:53 PM
JKR and Scholastic really need to lighten up. There are starving children all over the world, war, etc., & they're worried about spoilers. Serves them right for not releasing the books as e-books for those who prefer that delivery method.
Posted by: Christine | July 19, 2007 at 09:14 PM
Who decides which books get press (Harry Potter) and which get censored? After all, censorship is becoming America's favorite past-time. The US gov't (and their corporate friends), already detain protesters, ban books like "America Deceived" from Amazon and Wikipedia, shut down Imus and fire 21-year tenured, BYU physics professor Steven Jones because he proved explosives, thermite in particular, took down the WTC buildings. Free Speech forever (especially for books).
Last link (before Google Books caves to pressure and drops the title):
http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_detail.asp?&isbn=0-595-38523-0
Posted by: Norman T | July 22, 2007 at 05:17 AM
Steven Jones was a fraud who did anything but "prove" thermite took down the WTC. Free speech should carry some responsibility not to lie to people on hugely important issues, such as these deranged WTC conspiracy theorists are doing - even though their half-baked theories have been disproved by countless neutral scientists.
Posted by: John | July 23, 2007 at 06:56 AM
JKR and Scholastic do NOT need to lighten up. People need to respect and adhere to laws and requests about not releasing things early that they don't have the right to do! This book is WONDERFUL! I read it over the weekend and was thrilled with how JKR wrapped up the series. And like many others, I too felt great joy and great loss at various times throughout the book.
Posted by: Tina | July 23, 2007 at 09:29 AM
I think that people need to respect the wishes of JK Rowling and the publishers about not releasing the book early. I for one, enjoyed reading the book immensely and thought that it really was a great ending to the series. It would not have had the same aura about it and would not have been as fun to read had the ending leaked out before the book was released. How fun would it be to read a book that you already knew the ending?!
Posted by: Samantha | July 23, 2007 at 01:33 PM
I don't know why a lot of you are making such a big deal about the NYT review by MK. I read the review before I read the book and I still enjoyed reading the book very much. MK did say something about half a dozen deaths but even that was wrong because there were definitely so much more (who died). The ending was not revealed and most of what was in the review we already gussed from previous interviews with JKR herself and the numerous blogs about Deathly Hallows. I guess this has something to do about ego and pride, that her majesty JKRowling's wishes that anyone do not read the book and publish a review before July 21 12:01am was not followed. NYT and JKR doesn't have any contract about Harry Potter and Deathly Hallows. Although I love JKR for giving us Harry Potter and the rest of the characters to love(and hate) for the rest of our lives, I think she overreacted to the NYT review.
Posted by: Mel | July 25, 2007 at 05:26 PM
the book was famazing!!
JK Rowling is serioulsy a G.
she really wrapped up the books in the epilogue which i was extremely happy about.
cant wait for the encyclopedia to come out!!
Posted by: catherine | July 26, 2007 at 04:55 PM
It is all a tempest in a teacup, this issue of accidental release of the book prior to general release. It has done nothing to ruin the book itself or in the end, the reader's final experience. Right or wrong, it isn't the most important issue about authorship and publishing.
As an author, you write for only one person, yourself. As a publisher, you exist to distribute a work for your audience. Once an author decides to publish, they have engaged in an active relationship with the audience. The relationship is not an relationship of equals though; the author creates a work and the audience determines its value.
Even the suggestion that reviews, parody, satire, fan-fiction or any other audience exploration of the work dilutes it's value is ridiculous. The audience's experience of the work is only capable of determining the work's real value. The audience is an active participant in the whole relationship: it is not neurologically possible to experience music, movies, books passively, the only way any communication works is by engaging the thought and imagination of the reader/viewer including construction of derivative works by the audience even if those derivative works consists simply of water-cooler discussions at work. If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? In the case of works of art, if there is no audience, no, there is no impact. An unread book has no value. Truly valuable works of art are absorbed into the audience, expanded, replicated, derived, reinvented and so on. Just look at Shakespeare: how many versions of the Tempest have there ever been? (And while we are at it, the Tempest itself is derived from earlier works of value). The JK Rowling books' value comes from the depth and breadth of their audience and how it interacts with the concepts and ideas in the books.
Copyright law and intellectual property law are new concepts barely over a century old and came into existence primarily to foster authorship for the greater good of society by supporting the author. However, eager individuals and groups are now attempting to use these laws to foster aging business models that should be evolving and exert rights over society that were they were never intended to have. The entire original principle behind copyright was one of greater good for society, not the individual, and supporting the individual author was the mechanism, not the intended end result.
This rhetoric of IP theft is deliberately misleading. It is a diversion away from the true issue: that the audience that wants and pays for content but expects it to come through the best and newest technologies and the publishers have not been able to see forward past their old business practices to accommodate the audience. Really, it is all about publishers and other IP aggregators (not creators) dragging their heels rather than leading the way.
Posted by: Peter | July 27, 2007 at 12:32 AM
Shame upon those who give away the books secrets!
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