Spoiling the ‘Harry’ fun? (Don’t worry, we haven’t)

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

Salon.com’s Machinist blog reported Tuesday that the entire text of the final installment in the Harry Potter series, ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’ — in the form of digital photographs of each page — had been leaked online.

Columnist Farhad Manjoo wrote that he had downloaded the complete novel, and even quoted snippets from the book to prove his claim. By late afternoon, the news had been picked up by such newspapers as Toronto’s Globe and Mail.

Most interesting, I find, are the responses to the item, many of which beg Salon not to give anything away. ‘[P]lease don’t tell me what happens,’ pleaded poster ‘GeorgeSmiley.’

In response to angry Potter fans, Manjoo posted: ‘I appreciate you guys not wanting to read any of it. But as you’ll notice, I didn’t post any of it, nor did I give away anything that happens. I didn’t even link to the site where you can get it. . . . if you don’t want the book spoiled, you’re in luck, because all you have to do is nothing.’

What it all comes down to are technophiles’ bemoaning how technology might — or might not — be used to proffer stolen goods. Call me crazy, but I’ll bet only a handful of people who want to read the book are going to do so on the Web. Sure, there are people who just want to find out what happens — and even those who want to spoil the surprise for everybody else. For the rest of us, though, what we really want is to read the book the way it was meant to be read.

On paper.

— Orli Low