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.
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