Publishers battle against Harry Potter spoilers

In the last days before the world learns whether Harry Potter lives or dies, spoilers are spreading on the internet.

Scanned pages of what may be the entire text of the final instalment of JK Rowling’s series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, were circulating yesterday among web users.

A separate link, http://www.zendurl.com/h/hallows, displayed what the site claimed to be a seven-page epilogue and the table of contents from Deathly Hallows, which is coming out on Saturday amid tight security.

Similar information appeared on Monday on http://spoilerboy.googlepages.com/home.

Meanwhile, a resident of Vancouver, British Columbia, has said that he downloaded hundreds of pages from the 784-page book and US publisher Scholastic, has been busy ordering would-be spoilers to remove their information from the internet.

“I’m guessing we’re in the double digits,” said Scholastic spokeswoman Kyle Good, who added that requiring material to be pulled down did not mean it was authentic.

“There’s so much out there that it’s confusing for fans. Our lawyers are trying to keep down the amount of spoiler traffic that’s out there and clear it from places where fans might be reading.”

Anxious about keeping a lock on publishing’s ultimate mystery, Scholastic has refused all along to say whether a spoiler has the real book or not.

According to Good, there is more than one version of the full Potter text on the internet. She said the different versions all “looked convincing” and all had different content from each other.

Author JK Rowling, who has said two major characters will die, has begged the public not to give away the ending to her seventh and final Potter book.

Fan sites such as http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/ and http://www.mugglenet.com have vowed to keep spoilers away.

“A lot or our tips about spoilers are coming from fans,” Good said. “There’s a groundswell from fans who find these links and send them to us, saying, ’I’m not going to look at this, but somebody told me about it’.”

“I just hope they find these people and punish them accordingly,” said Leaky Cauldron webmaster Melissa Anelli.

“This is exceedingly wrong and mean-spirited. Let people enjoy their book, for Pete’s sake.”

Last month, a hacker who identified himself as Gabriel, claimed to have broken into the computer system of British publisher Bloomsbury and posted key plot points on http://seclists.org/misc/harrypotterspoilers.html.

Those plot points differ from what is revealed on http://www.zendurl.com/h/hallows/, which contradicts itself on the fate of Potter’s friend Ron.

“There is a lot of material on the internet that claims to come from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, but anyone can post anything on the internet and you can’t believe everything you see online,” Good said.

“We all have our theories on how the series will end, but the only way we’ll know for sure is to read the book ourselves at 0001 on July 21.”