In what is certainly the most notable movie leak in some time, the first 36 minutes of the latest Harry Potter film are now widely available on the Internet.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, will debut in the U.S. on Friday.
The “extended clip,” which is tagged as a DVD-Screener, has a large Warner Bros. watermark but is otherwise intact.
In 2007, a PDF of the book was leaked the week before the title was set for release.
The question now remains as to why the screener is only 36 minutes long, but the consensus is that Warner Bros. was so scared of a leak that they cut down the amount shown in the screeners they sent out.
It could also be that Warner just leaked the clip themselves to add to the hype, not that the Harry Potter series, especially this film, needs any more.
Regardless, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 will make over $100 million at the Box Office this weekend.
Result for: consensus
Sony has confirmed today that it will be offering ten free games to new PSPGo owners who register their systems online.
The games included in the deal are not some cheap ports either. Sony says the games included in the deal are: Gran Turismo, LittleBigPlanet, MotorStorm Arctic Edge, Wipeout Pure, Pursuit Force: Extreme Justice, FIFA 2010 World Cup, Need for Speed Shift, Gran Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, and Assassin’s Creed: Bloodlines.
In the past, Sony has offered free games to early PSPGo adopters, and free games to users who upgraded from older PSP handhelds.
While Sony has yet to reveal hardware sales for the Go, the general consensus is that sales have been a complete flop, especially in the EU and UK.
When the system launched, Don McCabe, managing director of the UK game chain Chips said he expected the console to “fail miserably” in the market.
Result for: consensus
A meeting that was called for British musicians to discuss UK government proposals on how to tackle illegal file sharing has come to a consensus that file-sharers should have their bandwidth “squeezed” for persistent copyright infringement. The congregation of more than 100 artists came to the agreement that file sharers should not have their Internet accounts suspended.
Artists including Lily Allen, George Michael, Annie Lennox, Radiohead guitarist Ed O’Brien and Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason signed a statement. It calls for two warning letters to be issued to users when they are caught sharing music illegally before their bandwidth speeds are restricted for certain purposes.
The idea would be to “render sharing of media files impractical while leaving basic e-mail and web access functional.” Lily Allen, who was the target of quite a large amount of criticism for running her mouth on the issue while technically breaching copyright law on the exact same website, was applauded by the audience for her campaign to “alert music lovers to the threat that illegal downloading presents to our industry.”
Jim Killock, executive director of digital rights activists the Open Rights Group, said that the artists had addressed the symptom, but not the cure, adding that the only answer was to “license products to compete with file-sharing.” However, he said major labels are being too cautious to approve some new services.
