A 33-year-old Vancouverite has downloaded what appears to be about 60% of the seventh and final Harry Potter book, even though the children's novel isn't supposed to be officially released until midnight Saturday.
The discovery of what appears to be major portions of the novel on a European website is part of the continuing hype over the imminent release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
Byron Ng said he started his search for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on Monday after reading a newspaper account of the heightened security around release of the book - including using measures such as GPS technology to track the trucks delivering the books to retailers.
"I know the basics and I've watched some of the movies but I don't really pay attention to it," he said. "This is a high value release so I looked at it for fun."
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Byron Ng said he started his search for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on Monday after reading a newspaper account of the heightened security around release of the book - including using measures such as GPS technology to track the trucks delivering the books to retailers.
"I know the basics and I've watched some of the movies but I don't really pay attention to it," he said. "This is a high value release so I looked at it for fun."
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Harry Potter's sexy new look - Pics + Video
Order of the Phoenix grosses $330 million worldwide
Ng said he went online and found what appeared to be the novel's first few paragraphs mentioned in an article that appeared Sunday in The Guardian, based in the U.K. He used that information to Google and find the rest of the novel. He found that someone had posted what appeared to be first 495 pages of the 794-page book on a peer-to-peer sharing website where directions to pirated movies and other material are located. So he downloaded it too.
"It is not an e-book or Word file, which is what people would normally do," he said. "What some guy did was take pictures of it, 500 little files, each with a picture of a page. Someone took the trouble to do that."
Jamie Broadhurst, director of marketing for Raincoast Books, said that in the "runup to a new Harry Potter, there's lot of speculation, there's lots of rumours. "There's lot of content that's purporting to be the authentic book. What I can say is that we can't possibly verify any of those rumours. "We would encourage people to wait until July 21 and share in the secret together -- at one minute past midnight."
On the information downloaded by Ng, most of the text is legible but some pages have been photographed at an angle, making them difficult to read. On each pdf, you can also see the knuckles and partial fingers of someone holding the book open on a carpeted floor. What Ng said was unusual about the file is that no one can claim bragging rights because the posting on the European website is anonymous and doesn't even have a fictitious name.
As of Monday afternoon, the file allegedly containing the latest Harry Potter novel had been downloaded 507 times. Ng said he doesn't think the posting was an example of guerrilla marketing -- anonymously using the Internet to build interest in a company or brand.
"I think it's a deliberate leak," he said. "Someone somewhere has taken the trouble to do this -- who knows who it is."
Raincoast Books has published 10 million copies of the Harry Potter books.
Related Links:
Harry Potter's sexy new look - Pics + Video
Order of the Phoenix grosses $330 million worldwide
"It is not an e-book or Word file, which is what people would normally do," he said. "What some guy did was take pictures of it, 500 little files, each with a picture of a page. Someone took the trouble to do that."
Jamie Broadhurst, director of marketing for Raincoast Books, said that in the "runup to a new Harry Potter, there's lot of speculation, there's lots of rumours. "There's lot of content that's purporting to be the authentic book. What I can say is that we can't possibly verify any of those rumours. "We would encourage people to wait until July 21 and share in the secret together -- at one minute past midnight."
On the information downloaded by Ng, most of the text is legible but some pages have been photographed at an angle, making them difficult to read. On each pdf, you can also see the knuckles and partial fingers of someone holding the book open on a carpeted floor. What Ng said was unusual about the file is that no one can claim bragging rights because the posting on the European website is anonymous and doesn't even have a fictitious name.
As of Monday afternoon, the file allegedly containing the latest Harry Potter novel had been downloaded 507 times. Ng said he doesn't think the posting was an example of guerrilla marketing -- anonymously using the Internet to build interest in a company or brand.
"I think it's a deliberate leak," he said. "Someone somewhere has taken the trouble to do this -- who knows who it is."
Raincoast Books has published 10 million copies of the Harry Potter books.
Related Links:
Harry Potter's sexy new look - Pics + Video
Order of the Phoenix grosses $330 million worldwide
