The Globe and Mail (Canadian newspaper) is not happy with the legal noise it received from the Canadian publisher of the Harry Potter books.

We had stated yesterday that we intended to post the review on globeandmail.com just after midnight and print it in today’s edition of the paper. Raincoast Books, the Canadian publisher of the book, asserted that such a review violated an injunction granted, without anyone else present, by a British Columbia court last Saturday morning.

That injunction stemmed from the apparently accidental sale of 14 books by a B.C. grocery store. (Lawyers for Raincoast say injunctions have also been granted in other countries, including the United Kingdom and Australia.) The injunction requested and granted to Raincoast is sweeping. It restrains “John/Jane Doe and anyone who is given notice of the order from unpacking, displaying, reading, distributing, offering for sale, selling, exhibiting in public or without the express consent of the Plaintiffs possessing Harry Potter # 6 prior to 12:01 a.m. local time on July 16, 2005.”

That’s right: Raincoast and Madam Justice Kirsti Gill rendered illegal the reading of a book without permission. Raincoast alleged that Globe writer Sandra Martin had come into possession of the book unlawfully and the review she planned to write therefore would be the product of unlawful reading and in contempt of court.

At 12:01 in several countries media outlets were online discussing the release of the book in various ways.
I went looking for spoilers early and didn’t find any.
If there are some up now, so what?
People that like the books aren’t going to read reviews, they’ll read the book. J.K. Rowlings series has one of the biggest publishing marvels in history. 270 million previous Potter books have been sold in 62 languages (not counting advance orders) Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince had 1.4 million advance orders from Amazon. Scholastic, the US publisher printed and shipped 10.8 million copies.

Google News has over 9 thousand entries on the new Potter book.
Harry Potter spoilers was number one on Technorati for over an hour on Saturday.