Harry Potter on Bittorrent

The last book of the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows has appeared on Bittorrent as a file with a JPG (picture) of each page. While this will make it annoying to read, but easy to print out, the intellectual property folks have been busy with fake torrents and other ways of mitigating the damage of the pre-release of the book.

The final book in the Harry Potter series has been leaked to BitTorrent. A torrent with photographs of each page of the American edition of “Deathly Hallows” has shown up on multiple BitTorrent sites. Source: Torrent Freak

The not surprising part is that the file showed up on BitTorrent, the interesting part is what kind of data is going to be embedded in with the JPG files, from what kind of camera, to what the resolution of the lens was, to a host of other information except the owner of the camera. At least they will be able to narrow it down a bit to learn about the type of equipment used.

The other thing will be the first original torrent file that showed up on demonoid that will have information about the user, and by what IP addresses the first initial downloads happened. It all depends on which company found it first, and what measures they put in place, other than trying to pollute the BitTorrent data so that few if any would get a clean copy.

According to torrent freak there is already one botched copy that is not complete. While we understand the enthusiasm for Harry, even we read it, the thing about downloading it is that the people who download it miss all the associated things that go along with it. For example, they are having a big release party, where everyone can dress up in costume, have a cook out, listen to stories, and then get their book. No sense in going if you have already read the thing.

The other damage is to JK Rowling, if you have any inkling of her past, this is her way of making money, and given the success of her books, she should be allowed to have her moment in the popular press, and make some decent dosh off her work. She is not a big evil corporation, she is a person, we know her through her books and interviews, and many people love what she writes.

It is great to be enthusiastic about a book, but this one is a bit more personal to every single Harry Potter fan, even if you down load it, go out and buy it, it is much better to have the official bound, printed, and bookshelf storable book, than it is to print out a pile of JPG files on laser jet printing paper. Try explaining that one to your kids.