Harry Potter and the Impossibility of Keeping Mum

Today's Future Tense (RealAudio - MP3 - iTunes) features and interview with security expert Bruce Schneier regarding the apparent leak of the upcoming Harry Potter book on the Internet. Here's a transcription:

Schneier: In the end you have to trust the people. And when it's just the author it's easier, just the author, editor and proofreader. But as you start adding the typesetters, and the artists, and the production people, it gets harder. And as you print the book you worry about the printers, and as it goes on trucks and shipped to all four corners of the planet and suddenly there are tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people you have to trust. Remember, it just takes one to take the book and put it on the 'Net. So it's impossible to trust that many people.

wavLength: The publisher spent a lot of money apparently to secure the secrets of the last book in the Harry Potter series. Should the publisher be really concerned now that it's going to lose business?


Schneier: You know, I'm sure the publisher really expected it. I mean if you think about it, anyone who's going to download the book and read it in photographed pages form is not someone who wouldn't by the book, right? It's going to be a rabid fan who's going to buy the book anyway. And honestly, someone who would read the book in this form because they can't afford it wouldn't buy the book anyway. So I think it's just added publicity. It adds to the excitement, it adds to the mystery.

wavLength: It seems to be it's not just a book like Harry Potter but it's all kinds of media where it would be almost impossible to have secret endings these days that folks won't know about ahead of time.

Schneier: Well it's impossible and it's not impossible. Many of my friends who are rabid Harry Potter fans are purposefully not reading the Internet this week. They don't want to see spoilers. So people want to be surprised. And people who care will make sure they are surprised.

wavLength:  I Tivo'ed the Sporanos, right? It would have been awfully easy to accidentally discover the ending of the last episode before I watched it the next day. I had to like hide from the media, hide from the Internet to preserve the surprise for me.

Schneier: What's different now is sort of the global reach of media. So if someone posts a surprise ending on the Internet, now everybody in the world with a computer connected to the Internet can now see it, as opposed to maybe 30 years ago, someone finds out about it, tells his friends, the rumor goes out but it moves much slower. On the Internet rumors like this move a lot faster. So it just takes one person. Only one person has the Harry Potter book on the 'Net. And he took digital photographs of the pages - a huge amount of work. And now suddenly everybody who wants it goes on BitTorrent and gets it. And that kind of fast-moving secret didn't happen before. And that's the difference.