8 Times Harry Potter Was On Trial

3. A Publisher Banned Consumers From Reading The Half-Blood Prince (Even Though They'd Already Bought It)

Surely this is the final evolutionary manifestation of spoiler culture. In 2005, Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince was on the cusp of being published throughout the world at large. Everywhere was on spoilers crackdown, with publishers ensuring that no part of Rowling's new book was leaked to the public. Unfortunately for Rowling, a Real Canadian Superstore grocery store mistakenly sold several copies of the book before the release date. Fair enough, you might think €“ a regrettable mistake that is pretty much inevitable regardless. Rather than warn fans to be vigilant about spoilers, however, the book's Canadian publisher Raincoast Books managed to obtain an injunction from the Supreme Court of British Columbia which essentially banned the people who had bought the book early from reading it. This lead to a massive media and legal discussion over whether or not human beings have a right to read, and a right to freely access information. In the end, it was ruled that copyright law has basically nothing to say about what people can do with a book once they've bought it.