Harry Potter and the Torrent of Bits


Google Results 1 – 10 of about 97,100 for harry potter and the deathly hallows torrent

Maybe it is just me, but the very idea of wading through one of these eight hundred page behemoths in ebook form gives me a headache. But then, I am not a Harry Potter maniac, so maybe squinting at a flickering screen to find out what finally happens to the little wizard with the lighting bolt on his forehead is worth it. Still, it is only a few days until the legal release, so does this torrent really matter much? Maybe, maybe not.
I watched Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix yesterday in a mostly empty theater. The effects were cool, the sets beautiful, and the actors all surprisingly mature. It was the usual suspects, Harry being mistreated at home, Harry and co. having trouble with the teacher of the Dark Arts, Harry saving the day. It’s just that this is the first of the movies that felt like just a stepping stone. Characters are seen for a moment and then not seen again. There is the problem of the one-eyed Professor who is now a good guy, but all I know of him, he was a potion swilling bad guy. This film was just confusing on many levels.
My favorite movie in the series was Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azcaban. I liked that whole bit with the three story bus and the talking shrunken head.
The Diane Rehm Show had an hour on Harry Potter yesterday and it was a lot of fun. Someone had the nerve to call in and question J.K. Rowlings writing talents. Talent or not, she is a billionaire from her scribblings and that is a lot more than most of us can say. One of the guests said she thought there would be a new series of movies made in the future-and here there was a pause as everyone listening thought about an extended mini-series with every scene faithful to the books-then she said it would be condensed into three movies that united the whole story. Huh?
I have not read the books, but I have heard one complaint from everyone that has-they left too much out of the movies.
On Regis and Kelly the other day, Daniel Radcliffe was on and said that ten people in the world had read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I would guess that it is a bit more than that now thanks to the bit torrent. And to be honest, could it really have ever been only ten anyway? Let’s see, J.K. had to read it, her editor, if the great and powerful Rowlings still has an editor, proof readers of one kind or another, and a few big wheels-that makes the ten. Once it was printed though, everyone in the plant had access to it, once it was shipped, everyone from the truck drivers to the warehouse people had access to it, everyone at Amazon, Barns&Noble and all the rest have had access to it for at least a few days now. And someone in that long chain of custody scanned it and put it online. Or just copied a file and put it online.
Twenty-five years ago when you bought a computer and went online, it was a very slow and very tedious bit of business. It took hours to download tiny files, but we still spent the hours downloading. Now it can takes hours to download, say, a 4 gigabyte DVD. An ebook, well, that takes just a few minutes, or seconds.
Bit Torrents are a peer-to-peer sharing protecol that allow anyone, anywhere to share any kind of media that can be turned from atoms to bits. Books, movies, software, music, and images are all out there for the taking. Like speeding, it is against the law, and like speeding a few people are caught and punished.
Remeber when the speed limit was 55? Remember when you had to pay for books? Or anything?


Jon Herrera
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2 Replies on “Harry Potter and the Torrent of Bits

  1. “There is the problem of the one-eyed Professor who is now a good guy, but all I know of him, he was a potion swilling bad guy. This film was just confusing on many levels.”

    Did you actually WATCH the end of the last film…(or read the book)?! Maybe you weren’t paying attention, perhaps. The REAL ‘one-eyed professor’ (mad-eye moody, by the way) was locked away while the bad guy was pretending to be him, swilling potion to allow him to retain his disguise (the same stuff that harry and ron used to disguise themselves as crab and goyle in a previous book).

    The REAL Mad-Eye Moody is now in the fifth film.

    Nothing ‘confusing’ about it, just poor memory/comprehension on your part.

  2. Yes, I saw the end of the film and the resolution to the problem. This does not, however, change the fact that I watched the bad guy for two hours and only saw the good guy helpless in his underwear.
    So I will always think of Mad-Eye Moody as a either bad guy, or a whimp. Which I think is a bit of a problem.