LA Times Prints Final Page of Harry Potter 7

[steuard]

I doubt that a blog posting will actually help anyone out there (I wonder whether anyone who reads this actually gets the LA times?), but I'm shaking my head in disbelief enough that I have to share. The LA Times printed a story today on the leak of page by page photos of the final Harry Potter book, and the print edition was accompanied by a legible photo of the final page! (Or at least, I assume it's the final page: the caption says that it shows "pages of the epilogue", and the text on the right-hand page ends well before the bottom margin.) Those who are worried about spoilers might want to avoid page A17 of the paper; all you're missing is the continuation of the front page article entitled "Grocery pact improves waves, health benefits" and a little article entitled "Miers holds firm on not testifying, lawyer says" (no loss there: that's hardly a surprise).

When I saw the picture, I had trouble actually believing that a major newspaper would do such a ridiculous thing. I told myself, "Maybe they've blurred it or something so it's not legible." Then I tried to steal a glance, just enough to see whether that was true without actually reading enough to be spoiled. It wasn't true. And I seem to have failed (despite looking away immediately after reading just a couple of words). Curse you, LA Times! I'm not a Harry Potter fanatic, but I do my best to avoid spoilers for things that interest me much less than this! I can imagine a lot of people getting really upset with them about this.

Comments

[thaisa.livejournal.com]

I also wonder about legal issues as well, even if they feel all right about the ethical issues. Which they shouldn't.

[donaithnen.livejournal.com]

I suspect that it _probably_ falls under fair use in this case, although that wouldn't make a lawsuit by the publishers unreasonable, which you would have thought might have made them a little leery of the whole idea. Well that along with, you know, pissing off a lot of fans.

[steuard.livejournal.com]

I'm not so sure about fair use in this case. I've heard elsewhere that fair use absolutely does not apply to unpublished material, which this most certainly is and will remain until Saturday. But perhaps not; it's hard to imagine that they didn't consult their in-house legal team before printing the picture.

You know, if they'd just published the FIRST page instead of the last one, I don't think anyone would have complained at all. Grr.