Between the big blockbuster movie and the last book, I’m on Harry Potter overload. To be fair, I don’t like the guy–he’s average and boring, but by virtue of his un-asked-for gifts, not nearly the anti-hero that is, say, Holden Caulfield–nor do I feel like I’m paying particular attention to the Potter phenomenon, which goes to show the breadth with which this latest marketing blitz has been launched. I simply can’t escape Harry and his companions in trouble.

I could easily ignore the hype by pushing it to the far recesses of my brain. But here’s what really gets my goat: the way that J.K. Rowling and her Scholastic thug posse attempt to control absolutely every aspect of the new book’s release. Two cases in point:

  1. TechCrunch points out that the new HP book leaked is available on the internet on illegal filesharing networks. Scholastic’s lawyers send a takedown notice to TechCrunch . . . even though TechCrunch is merely reporting the fact that the book leaked (in the form of crappy photos!) and is not hosting the book itself.
  2. J.K. Rowling gets pissed off that the New York Times reviewed the book two days before its release, and a Scholastic spokeswoman likens the review to the Boston Tea Party, implying American impudence, and articulating an international rift where there likely isn’t one.

I understand the desire to keep spoilers under wraps, but we’ve been dealing with this problem since the dawn of publishing and movie-making, and we do reasonably well with a system of avoidance (avoiding revealing reviews) and trust (trusting our friends not to tell us how it ends). Furthermore, neither Scholastic nor Rowling cannot reasonably think that a photographed–not scanned, remember–copy of the book is an adequate substitute for the book itself, and thus will cost her money. Anyone crazy enough to download the thing and actually read it is likely to buy the book, buy the DVDs, buy all the horizontal merchandise, dress up as Ron for Halloween, and give Rowling his firstborn upon request. The rest of us could care less.

I, for one, am continuing my Harry Potter boycott of several years, which thus far has been driven by disinterest, a desire to read other things, and the fact that the first few books failed to sufficiently brand my brain.