Would-Be Harry Potter Spoilers Spread On Internet

NEW YORK (AP) _ In the final days before the world learns whether Harry Potter lives or dies, spoilers _ or those pretending to spoil _ are spreading on the Internet. <br/><br/>On Tuesday, the Web link

Tuesday, July 17th 2007, 4:18 pm

By: News On 6

NEW YORK (AP) _ In the final days before the world learns whether Harry Potter lives or dies, spoilers _ or those pretending to spoil _ are spreading on the Internet.

On Tuesday, the Web link http://www.zendurl.com/h/hallows/ displayed what the site claimed to be a seven-page epilogue and scanned photographs of the table of contents from ``Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,'' coming out July 21 under ultra-tight security. Similar information appeared 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 U.S. publisher Scholastic, Inc., has been busy ordering would-be spoilers to remove their information from the Internet.

``I'm guessing we're in the double digits,'' says 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.''

Author J.K. 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 says. ``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.'''

Last month, a hacker who identified himself as ``Gabriel'' claimed to have broken into the computer system of British publisher Bloomsbury PLC 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 buddy 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 says.

``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 12:01 a.m. on July 21.''