Why Harry Potter Fans Are Outraged On NYT Premature Review?

I was reading the outrage of Harry Potter fans regarding the premature review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows book. I had read the review and it contains some spoilers like the meaning of deathly hallows, number of deaths (I am amazed that someone took the pain to actually count it!) etc. Harry Potter fans all over the world are outraged that NYT has released a premature (before official release date) review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Some of their responses in NYT blog are:

“I think it’s important to remember that there was never a contract or an agreement between The Times and Rowling or her publisher.”

That does NOT give you right to be so disrespectful to Jo Rowling or her fans. I would have thought that a paper, like the New York Times, would have been able to use their common sense to realise how big this is; you’re doing nothing but embarrass yourselves. You’re proving that you’re no different from the vermin out there, trying to get their name in the headlines for selling the book early. So many papers look up the New York Times, but you’re just sinking lower and lower when you disrespect Jo Rowling and her fans. Stop trying to be the top at everything; have some compassion and sympathy; have some damn respect and patience.

— Posted by Kelsi

I am one of the individuals that emailed protesting the reviewing of the Harry Potter book before Saturday. I think that the New York Times could have respected the excitement of their (former) future readers and waited until Saturday to publish the review. Commenting that the review would have come out on Saturday so the readers could chose not to read the review misses the point. Given the final copy of the Harry Potter series I would guarantee the readers would not be reading the Times before they finished the book.
Retired Librarian

— Posted by Pam Reid

The review DID make me want to read the book. However, I still think the timing was bad and I blame the judgment of the editorial staff. If a Times employee was shopping for something else,saw HP7 on sale, bought it, gave it to a reviewer from which she wrote a review, The Times STILL could have used editorial judgement to hold off two days to publish it!

— Posted by Carol Z.

These are excuses.

We deserve an apology.

And, did the reviewer actually read the book within a few hours…..

The Times is wrong to have done this.

Apologize

— Posted by P. Mihalick

The last point is interesting - “And, did the reviewer actually read the book within a few hours…..”
I don’t know how long the reviewer claimed to have taken to write the review but a 750+ pages tome should take at least 8 hours even for a rapid reader, probably more, speaking from personal experience. Looking at how it published the number of deaths in the book I would suspect a text search function was used, obviously not on the printed copy. It is very likely, even though they die before they admit it, NYT used the pirated copy available on the internet for the review.

This is an interesting case where human ethical expectations do not match with the laws of the land. As NYT blog stated NYT is under no legal contract from Harry Potter’s publishers and hence what it did was legally ok. They are legally correct.

On the other hand Harry Potter readers are outraged at NYT spoiling their anticipation and fun in reading the new tome. I can understand their sentiments as many have been waiting for several days to get their hands on the book. I too like Harry Potter books and have to compulsively read till I finish it. But then I am always a compulsive reader. I can never keep down an interesting story book until I finish it, be it Harry Potter’s latest tome or Superman comics or Batman or Byomkesh Baksi.

An interesting twist to this case is that Harry Potter’s book has already been made available on the internet in PDF and eBook format on a popular bittorrent site. So anyone can actually download and read the book much ahead of the release date if they want to. Many fans have stated that they do not want to read it from the internet and wait for the hard-copy. I admire their allegiance to Ms. Rowling and Bloomsbury publications. In the same vein it can be said that readers of NYT can refrain from reading the review. Case closed. However the problem is that NYT didn’t give a spoiler warning to protect its readers from reading the review and discovering that it contains spoilers. That is their biggest mistake in my humble opinion.

The Harry Potter fans may disagree. In their comments it was evident that their main grudge was that it was published two days ahead of public release. That is a point I don’t get. My personal advice to such readers, having full sympathy to their pain, is that they should refrain from reading any Harry Potter reviews starting from few weeks before the release date to till after they finished reading the book.