Harry Potter Leaked with Photos from a Canon EOS 350D

By Robert • July 27, 2007

Photo of Harry Potter Book Any photographer worth his salt knows how to save photos with and without the metadata. A leaked version of the latest Harry Potter novel was painstakingly photographed page-by-page and and circulated on the internet via BitTorrent before the book’s worldwide release last Friday. The somewhat blurry photos showed each pair of facing pages of the book laid out on a beige red-and-green flecked looped carpet and held open by someone’s fingers. Some of the pages are difficult to read. But the ending, the subject of feverish speculation for months, is completely readable.

Exchangeable Image File Format (EXIF) data has already revealed that the camera used to take the photos was a Canon EOS 350D. Also present were the serial number and camera settings. The photos were most likely taken in Europe as the camera is sold under the name Rebel XT in the USA. The owner can only be traced if the camera had been registered when it was bought or if it had been taken to a Canon Service Center for repair.

The perpetrator is lucky as Canon said they would not attempt to track down the camera’s owner because of data protection issues. It is uncertain whether Bloomsbury Publishing PLC plans to take out a copyright claim over the images or pursue further action.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Rowling HCNDJ