Harry Potter's 'Half Blood Prince' Leaked 784
darkonc writes "The CBC is reporting that about 15 copies of "Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince" were accidently sold at a 'Great Canadien Superstore' in a suburb of Vancouver BC. The Canadian Distributor, Raincoast Books managed to get
an injunction prohibiting the people who recieved the books from talking about them and demanding that they return the books to Raincoast until Friday. To add a carrot to the stick, raincoast is offering various goodies including a signed bookplate."
Stupidity (Score:5, Insightful)
Real Canadian Superstore? (Score:3, Insightful)
Harry Potter == Fag Homo Books (Score:0, Insightful)
Re:So much for the DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
Um... (Score:5, Insightful)
Am I missing something, or does that seem even more retarded than something our court systems would do?
Blake
how did this happen? (Score:5, Insightful)
Good Lord, Have Mercy... (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, if I were the employee who screwed this up, I'd sleep with a pistol underneath my pillow. Everybody knows the big boss man isn't too forgiving of fuck ups like this.
Oh, wait... Harry Potter books? I thought we were talking about an international shipment of premium grade heroin.
Who the fuck cares about some Harry Potter books coming out a little early?
Re:More Questions then Answers (Score:2, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Stupidity (Score:5, Insightful)
But please don't let me get in the way of any cultist fanatics or anything.
Follow much? Thin the herd!
Re:Stop the insanity! (Score:1, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Um... (Score:3, Insightful)
IANAL, but nobody can - at least in the U.S. - if the buyer completed the transaction in good faith (e.g. didn't steal it or purchased a book that he/she knew in advance was stolen). It's all in the UCC [cornell.edu]. However, I don't know if Canada has a similar law.
Re:Um... (Score:5, Insightful)
Disturbing Much (Score:3, Insightful)
It'll be a lovely day indeed when the DRM enthusiasts we know and love from the electronics world start doing this. Hey kid, is that PSP hackable? Report to the distribution center for immediate impound of noncompliant device; a compliance officer(courtesy of Uncle Sam) will be along to assist you shortly.
Re:Um... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's the book store's fuck up, not the book buyers.( Unless they bribed one of those underpaid clerks)
Re:More Questions then Answers (Score:3, Insightful)
So the BC Supreme Court seizes private property now, just because the seller wants it back? Three words for that:
Ha!
Ha!
Ha!
It will be interesting to see how far they are willing to go to enforce this decree. If I had one of those copies I'd take it camping with me and come back on the 16th and claim ignorance. What a RIDICULOUS waste of the taxpayers' money!
Maybe no one is gonna be fired... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:More Questions then Answers (Score:2, Insightful)
If I had one of those copies I'd take it camping with me and come back on the 16th and claim ignorance.
Bah, I would skip camping and go straight for ignorance.
[Judge] Where is the book?
[Mel] That book I legally purchased in a bookstore? Uh, I must've put it somewhere... Last time I remember reading it, I was on a can.
Case adjourned.
Re:Spoilers! (Score:4, Insightful)
I can't fathom why anyone would think these are the first 15 copies that have been taken.
These books are sitting in the back of thousands of stores across the world. Does anybody seriously believe that not a single stockboy managed to get into the box? No bookstore owners or managers thought they'd get a head start on the book?
Yeah, I know steps were taken [slashdot.org], but come on. Nothing described there was magic.
Harry Potter Good (Score:5, Insightful)
The stories are not high-brow literature, nor are they intended to be. They are, however, good fantasy. The storylines are entertaining, and they have a fair bit of depth to them. The world is also deep, and pretty self-consistent. The books are humerous on many levels, and also at times a bit more insiteful than they are perhaps given credit for. A lot of the themes that started to emerge in Order of the Phoenix, and that will likely escellate in Half-blood Prince are especially pertinent today. (Although perhaps the death-eater/nazi comparison is more obvious, there are subtle but interesting parallels between the situation with voldamot and his followers and more modern things such as terrorism.) The books contain interesting moral delimas and gray areas (the position of the house elves, S.P.E.W and the take of the other characters offers interesting parallels to the philosophy of neitzsche for example) and are also just plain a lot of fun.
I think the biggest problem with the Harry Potter series is that a lot of people will overlook it BECAUSE it's so popular. I know that I avoid things that are fairly popular because I think that in general the masses have terrible taste, and if most people like something, then I'll probably think it's crap. Luckily I did check out Harry Potter and found that in this case, the public was right, the books are good, and maybe other people who have avoided it for the same reason might find that they too enjoy the stories.
Re:More Questions then Answers (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Harry Potter Good (Score:3, Insightful)
Just because something is popular, doesn't necessarily mean it sucks.
It took me many years to learn that lesson. My favorite saying in response to something being deemed "popular" or widely acclaimed was "Yeah, and the Big Mac is the best selling meal in America."
Re:Spoilers! (Score:3, Insightful)
Not for millions of books to thousands of locations on the same day. (Just think of it as a paper version of the Slashdot effect.)
Re:More Questions then Answers (Score:5, Insightful)
Its pretty simple psychology they are using. Humans desire that which cannot be had, and if this book is being protected by the CIA, FBI, and Mafia, then it must be the greatest book ever.
Oh and I'll be @ my local barnes and noble 10 pm friday night waiting in line, and then will have a contest with a few friends to see who can finish it first. No joke. People who make fun of the books as childish simply cannot appreciate a simple fun story
Re:What are you talking about? (Score:5, Insightful)
The book IS going to be hugely popular. Nobody is denying that. And 15 leaked copies on the other side of the world aren't going to hurt any of your local bookstores.
BUT... Harry Potter is huge. Many B&N stores are receiving 4 times as many copies as are reserved, and the number of reserved copies per store is freakin' huge. Keep in mind some stores are getting considerably more than just 4 times as many. When the book goes on sale at midnight, stores will be in the midst of a whole Harry Potter festival of sorts - games and activies based on the books, other areas of the stores (music) will be closed, etc etc. The book is going at 40% off, and it's expected to sell out almost instantly regardless of the seemingly obscene number of books being shipped. We're talking multicolored wristbands designate lines that stretch outside of stores, fire marshall occupancy limits (which doesn't happen too often in the bookstore world), and full staffs working into the wee hours of the morning and starting again the next day.. The release of this book is as big as Star Wars, and I don't say that jokingly.
So back to the problem - it's been said many times already that if the strict on sale dates didn't exist, some stores would get crushed and others reap huge rewards based purely on shipping or handling that may or may not have been under their control. Imagine if Star Wars was slated for 8 theaters in your area, but only 2 of them had it for the first 2 weeks - that would have huge effects on those theaters for a long time to come. Same idea. I won't even get into the price premium that could be charged by the few stores that, by chance, got HP early.
So for those 15 leaked copies on the other side of the world, in and of themselves they are a non-issue. However, if nothing is done, it sets a precedent for the strict on sale date being unimportant, and then you've got the fiasco mentioned above, and THAT is why they can't be ignored.
Of course there are marketing and hype concerns, that's a given, but this is much about protections for stores (of all sizes) as anything else.
Re:So much for the DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh yes it is. My guess is within 24 hours of the official release.
One wonders why these publishing houses don't sell their own e-book at a reasonable price and soak up most of the demand for the 'unofficial' copy.
Re:So much for the DRM (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:More Questions then Answers (Score:5, Insightful)
They get given some work to do, delegate the work to a lower level employee, supervise them as much as required. If they lower-level employee fucks it up then it's the managers fault for not supervising enough/giving it to the wrong person/not supplying training/employing an idiot/etc/etc/etc
So shut up.
At least down here (Score:5, Insightful)
All of this shit just because Hermione finally dies in this book.
Publicity Stunt (Score:3, Insightful)
And doesn't anyone think that the small "leak" might itself be a publicity stunt, to get another few front page articles on CNN? That is far more valuable monetarily than the cost of any supposed leak. And showing the publishers doing good by offering signed copies, also adds to the PR.
Management responsibility (Score:3, Insightful)
That wasn't so much insightful as wishful thinking on the part of someone who isn't a manager.
We used to have a culture where management never took any heat for anything, which was a bad thing. But expecting someone to take responsibility for something they had no realistic knowledge of or control over (and expecting managers to supervise all staff all the time in case someone makes one little mistake is just that situation) then holding them accountable is as absurd as any other feel-good political correctness, and about as constructive.
I'm not a manager, BTW, just a guy who believes in credit where it's due and not assigning blame randomly just because something went wrong.
Re:More Questions then Answers (Score:1, Insightful)
Inconceivable... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Management responsibility (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you really, honestly believe that an employee in a book store sold these books by accident, and that their management hadn't told them about the release date? I know a couple of people who work in bookstores here, and they've had the release conditions drilled into them for months already.
I find the idea that a guy with access to the "secure" storage took a bit of extra money home one night to look the other way far more plausible, and you can hardly blame management for that.
Re:More Questions then Answers (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course I'd return my copy for a signed bookplate in a heartbeat.
I'd try to trade mine for sex first, and if that didn't pan out, I'd take the bookplate.
Before doing that, I'd think about what kind of girls are into Harry Potter if I were you...injunction? (Score:5, Insightful)
The only ones legally liable are the stores that sold copies early, who have broken a written agreement with the publisher. (they should...er... get the book thrown at them?)
Re:More Questions then Answers (Score:3, Insightful)
Where is the Outrage? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:injunction? (Score:3, Insightful)
Everthing I learned in life (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't buy a book, you buy the permission to read it.
[;-)]
Add to that: (Score:3, Insightful)
My favorite: "Budweiser is the best-selling beer in America, by a long shot."
Harry Potter is more like Guinness. Not necessarily the best, but damned good.
Re:injunction? (Score:3, Insightful)
Book Seller A goes bankrupt. The distributor is owed hundred of thousands of dollars. Can they go after the customers? No. Because the customers acted in good faith and purchased the items.
Read the Uniform Commercial Code [cornell.edu] to understand what constitutes a sale.
Re:More Questions then Answers (Score:2, Insightful)
Pte Bloggins lies to cover up for this buddy
Pte Bloggins is found out and gets reamed
An investigation is done to determine how far up the chain responsibility goes.
e.g. The immediate supervisor for a Pte is either a MCpl or a Sgt. Therefore, it is likely that they will get reamed far worse than the Lt who only supervises the Sgts. If it is found that both the Sgt and Lt were in on this, then everyone gets reamed with the Senior NCO and the Officer getting worse punishment (because they should have known better).
AUTHORITY and RESPONSIBILITY are two different things. You can always delegate your AUTHORITY, but never your RESPONSIBILITY. You AUTHORIZE the subordinates that you trust to carry out their orders in accordance with your intent. In that you are giving them your authority. But you are ultimately REPSONSIBLE for the outcome.
Keep in mind that the section commander (usually a Sgt in infantry units) are the ones that manage the most people (8 - 10 troops per section). The Pl commander (usually a Lt) should not and does not actively get involved in the managing of Ptes unless there is no Senior NCO around or something is going incredibly wrong. At that point, he may decide to step in, but usually he will either approach the Section Commander or the Sergeant Major and tell them that things are not happening correctly and let them sort it out.
Offficers are the planners and policy makers. They make the high-level decision. Senior NCOs are the whip, they get the job done. How it gets done is usually left to them, they should be able to do the job given only broad directions (hence the importance of being able to ascertain your commander's intent).
Why be guilty? (Score:3, Insightful)
"I can appreciate a good story, but I appreciate a well-written one more. Harry Potter is a guilty pleasure, like the trashy cyberpunk novels I sometimes read..."
There's a time and a place (in my diet) for fillet steak and another time and place for a hotdog.
Why should reading matter be any different?
T&K.
Re:Management responsibility (Score:4, Insightful)
2. "...used to have a culture where management never took the heat for anything..." - I submit that we still do largely have this culture, especially in the middle and upper management (not so much as team leaders and the like). CEOs can pile-drive their company or rape it for good looking financial markets and bad long term value and then what do they get? A nice big multi-million dollar severance cheque. Not exactly sure why you figure this is 'used to' versus 'currently'?
You should never accept responsibility (which means you *should* be called to account in the event of a bad outcome) if you don't have the power to go with it, to control and influence the situation sufficient to give you every opportunity to avoid the bad outcome. Because then, if it happens, either you were lazy, had bad judgement, or otherwise failed to take appropriate steps.
I agree you shouldn't hold powerless people to account for things they could not know nor could not control. Yet at the same time, when I hear Gagliano up in front of the public saying he couldn't reasonably have known about the millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars being illegally spent in his department, when he *is* SUPPOSED to be the RESPONSIBLE person, I can't help but say 'why did you take the job under those circumstances?'. Crown Ministers, CEOs, etc. should never accept a slot that assigns them more responsibility than power to change things and direct them - responsibility should be exactly commensurate with your ability to control things. Where you haven't got that control, you shouldn't accept the responsibility. The fact that you do so should not mean you are immune to consequences - maybe you'll know better next time!
At the same time, manager who try to foist responsibility for deadlines, etc. off onto their employees who had nothing to do with creating the timelines, should not reasonably expect the employees to accept that responsibility. If the company management had actually wanted buy-in and acceptance of responsibility (you can't, in my view, be forced into responsibility - you must accept it willingly), they would have involved those who they wished to make responsible in the decision making process.
It is just this confusion about responsibility (and the attempt to disclaim it or assign it without commensurate powers) that has led to the nightmares in the private and public sector which we see grace the evening news of late.