He writes that "all you have to do is nothing" if you don;t want to know what happens.

Great. What a keen insight into the psychology of human curiosity.

Farhad: Don't think of a white bear!

OMG!Was I the only one to flip out to discover that Harmoine is a dude?! I never trusted Colbert, but this time he was dead on!

Googling around a bit turns up a number of these "books". Many of them are actually fan fiction, printed and bound to look like the real book. I haven't been able to ascertain if this particular one is real or not, but based on the number of fakes, odds are it's just another convincing piece of fan fiction.

First let me preface this by saying this post contains NO spoilers. It is safe to read!

Surely by now the morons who get their kicks by making people upset on the interwebs are spamming message boards and blog comments with the supposed details of the leaked Epilogue. They are only doing this to upset you.

The answer is: don't get upset. The truth is, until your eyes cross the pages of the book on Saturday, you have no idea if what they are writing is true or not. I could throw darts at names on a board and have a good shot at accidentally predicting who lives and dies. If you come across or hear something, just take a deep breath and repeat the mantra: "until those pages my eyes do see, I do not know anything!"

Yes, I had noticed that too and I’ve been thinking about it way too much since. At the very least there should be a ‘spoiler warning’ at the TOP of the article (not hidden in the very paragraph we should be avoiding).

For now I’m just trying to forget so the story can unfold for me the way the author intended. You only get one first read and I guess we’re all going to have to be mega protective of this one.

...but I apparently don't read them for their grammar.

This was irresponsible. People have gone to great lengths to keep the contents of this book a secret, not least J.K.Rowling, and now you've just told an entire online community how to circumvent that, as well as leaking passages from the book.

I hope you're proud of yourselves.

Some of us don't only read books to find out what happens next. I like the Potter books in part for its sturdy prose. Also for it's more honest depiction of orphans (I am one; if iPhone lady can share so can I) than in the horribly navel-gazing "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius." My point is, who's really shortchanging the books here? If all you care about is what happens next, then why even bother reading the book? Why not just find a synopsis Monday morning so that you don't have to waste time reading and you can go straight to finding out what happens next?

I beg to differ with ALL of you who have said that Manjoo did not spoil anything for anyone. I'm surprised no one has mentioned it. It was quite clear in the previous HP book if two people are going to die, then Snape needs to go way at the top of the "most likely to take a dirt nap" list. And now we know (90% certain, unless the quote was from a flashback) he at least makes it 90% of the way through the book. That stinks. So as I read Deathly Hollows, any time Snape is in danger before page 680-something, I can feel relatively certain that he'll make it out alive.

That's a spoiler. And that's crappy.

Aside from the legal issues, which I admit may be considerable, how will reading the book "spoil" it?

If you picked up your Harry Potter at midnight this Friday and began to read it, would it have "spoiled" the book for the millions of people who didn't get theirs until Fedex delivered their copies from Amazon? How about those who were forced to wait six months longer until they could check out a copy from the library?

If you read a bootleg copy a few days before the official release, how will reading it early "spoil" the book for you?

Now, I can understand feeling some annoyance if someone were to tell you crucial plot details, like The Ending, before you had a chance to read it for yourself. But, if you skip right to the final chapter of your own legitimate book when you receive it through normal channels and read the ending, have you "spoiled" the book? Is it somehow no longer worth reading?

If I had my hands on a copy of Deathly Hallows at this moment, I would read it. Maybe I'm just spoiled.

Keith,

Get a grip, man. Those sentences told us nothing without their context AND had a warning before them. 'Unfamiliar with basic morality' for reporting on the news? That's exactly the line Bush uses to say that journalists are helping the terrorists.

"But as you'll notice, I didn't post any of it," you say.

But in fact, you did post several sentences. Nothing significant, nothing that would give away any of the plot -- but you did post some of it. Why should we be surprised that you're so unfamiliar with basic morality? Heck, you don't even recognize a bald-faced lie when you tell one.

My article contains no DMCA-prohibited circumvention device.

If you read my piece carefully, you'll see I didn't have to use BT to get it. I got a PDF from a Web site that was linked on The Pirate Bay.

I think it could be argued that he did something illegal. Had he downloaded the leak through a conventional method (ie one way) there probably wouldn't be a problem. But as I said earlier, when you download through bittorrent you are at the same time also distributing the file to others.