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wavLength: July 17, 2007 Archive
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Harry Potter book leaked on Internet. Does it matter?
Posted at 6:33 PM on July 17, 2007 by Jon Gordon (0 Comments)
It was bound to happen. Images of the pages of the latest and last Harry Potter book are all over the Internet.
The publisher spent millions trying to secure the book, but that seems like a fool's errand. As Bruce Schneier points out, all it takes is one bad actor.
I've been fielding press calls on this, mostly from reporters asking me what the publisher could have done differently. Honestly, I don't think it was possible to keep the book under wraps. There are millions of copies of the book headed to all four corners of the globe. There are simply too many people who must be trusted in order for the security to hold. And all it takes is one untrustworthy person -- one truck driver, one bookstore owner, one warehouse worker -- to leak the book.
But Schneier says it doesn't matter, and the publisher shouldn't be too concerned about the leak.
Anyone fan-crazed enough to read digital photographs of the pages a few days before the real copy comes out is also someone who is going to buy a real copy. And anyone who will read the digital photographs instead of the real book would have borrowed a copy from a friend. My guess is that the publishers will lose zero sales, and that the pre-release will simply increase the press frenzy.
On BoingBoing, Cory Doctorow asserts that attempts to keep the wraps on the book until publication are misguided.
With the last book, the publisher was so freaked out about ebook "piracy" that they refused to release an official electronic edition. The result? Fans made their own electronic text in 24 hours. And other fans translated the book into German in 45 hours.That'a a lot of fan-energy, sitting out there, looking for ways to love these books. Surely there's a smarter way to deal with that kind of love than attempting to suppress it?
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