Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows recently leaked on a few torrent sites... or did it? Security measures taken included pallets of books protected by alarms, baited lawyers, and even delivery trucks with satellite tracking, which seems at odds with this UPS delivery truck stacked with loose boxes 5 days before they are to be delivered. A spokeswoman at Scholastic, the book's US publisher, said "she was aware of at least three different versions of the file 'that look very convincing' with what she described as 'conflicting content.'" So what's real and what's fake? We'll just have to wait and see.
posted by jwells on Jul 17, 2007 - 124 comments

Anyone who has spent time browsing through Deviant Art has almost certainly run into the cartoons of a young Australian woman named Gemma Wilson. She is fond of Harry Potter, snakepeople and (occasionally) torture and hermaprodites. She has a fan club. And she has detractors. Make of this what you will.
posted by metasonix on Jun 26, 2007 - 29 comments

Spoiling Harry Potter: Hacker claims to have spoiled the last Harry Potter book with a technique called spear phishing. "We make this spoiler to make reading of the upcoming book useless and boring ... It's amazing to see how much people inside the company have copies and drafts of this book." Let's see if we can discuss spoilers and spear phishing without actually spoiling anything here. Warning: The Wired link is safe, but it contains a link to the purported spoiler.
posted by Cool Papa Bell on Jun 21, 2007 - 82 comments

So you say you want to know the name of the new Harry Potter book?
posted by barjo on Dec 21, 2006 - 220 comments

Harry Potter and Lord Wal-d-mart: The Late Night Players entertain us this friday: Harry Potter combats the low low prices of Wal-Mart.
posted by cjoh on Oct 27, 2006 - 8 comments

Harry and the Potters was the first wizard rock band but inspired other wizard rock bands such as Draco and the Malfoys, The Whomping Willows, The Dark Markers, Cousin Wizardface, The Hungarian Horntails, Bella's Love, The Prisoners Of Azkaban and Ginny and the Weasleys." also check out this, this, this, and this.
posted by alona on Jul 2, 2006 - 47 comments

Like many internet communities, the Harry Potter fan community is a close knit one and prone to outbursts of drama and strife. But what happens when a single member is pulling the strings? This long account is about msscribe who through sock puppetry, trolling, and some flat out lies polarized online Potter fans for the past four years.
posted by robocop is bleeding on Jun 30, 2006 - 88 comments

Jihad, terrorism and asylum - in rhyme and iambic pentameter (small QT movie, some profanity) A Middle-Eastern chef and a xenophobic Northern English cook argue about war, bombs and asylum seekers - in the kind of flowing verse one might expect from Shakespeare. It's from British indie director Sally Potter and quite apposite, representing the kind of debates which are going on following the London bombings.
posted by tobyslater on Aug 3, 2005 - 6 comments

Harry Potter: The New Atlas Shrugged.
posted by Espoo2 on Nov 30, 2003 - 77 comments

The Gospel According to Harry Potter. Connie Neal thinks that she sees "glimmers of the Gospel" in the Harry Potter books. Not the most interesting attempt to counter the occult hysteria surrounding this book, but sure to stir up some hilarious controversy just the same.
posted by mikrophon on Oct 8, 2002 - 19 comments

As Harry Potter tops all box office records, it seems that some parents don't want their kids to watch the film because some think it promotes witchcraft. Are separation of church and state arguments valid here, or are the parents a bunch of wet blankets?
posted by Rastafari on Nov 18, 2001 - 120 comments

Aw, for the love of Kee-rist, can't anyone quit screwing with stuff?

Columbus plans to shoot parallel versions of the first film -- one for the U.S. market and one for Britain. His plan is to shoot two or three alternate sequences for each film and to give the British film the first novel's original British title, "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone." The American film will be called, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone."

posted by baylink on Aug 24, 2000 - 12 comments

While I'm not a fan of Harry Potter books (yet - I'll get around to checking them out someday soon), I find it interesting to see some folks still strongly oppose the stories of sorcery, while it seems the average CNN.com reader doesn't see a problem with them (the poll is 97-3 as I write this). It seems that every few years, some fiction strikes the fancy of kids, and parents rally against it, even though it piques kids' imaginations and gets them reading. What's so wrong with Potter books?
posted by mathowie on Jul 6, 2000 - 15 comments