p2pnet - rss feed: JK Rowling vs The Harry Potter Lexicon
p2pnet news | Movies:- "The Harry Potter Lexicon —- This is such a great site that I have been known to sneak into an internet café while out writing and check a fact rather than go into a bookshop and buy a copy of Harry Potter (which is embarrassing). A website for the dangerously obsessive; my natural home."
The quote comes on, Yes, the official JK Rowling site.
Which is strange.
Because billionairess Rowling says she’ll feel "exploited" if Steve Vander Ark’s The Harry Potter Lexicon companion to the Potter series is published, according to Reuters.
Vander Ark says he started it in 2000, "as a tiny little website with a few lists on it".
He says he created the graphics and most of the writing on the 700 + pages of the current Lexicon.
But Rowling and Warner Bros are suing RDR Books, which planned to publish Vander Ark’s book last November.
There are currently L’Encyclopédie Harry Potter (in French) and El Diccionario de los Magos (en Español) and "coming soon," Russian, Chinese, Dutch, Hebrew, Italian, Arabic, Portuguese, and Hungarian versions of the Lexicon, promises Vander Ark.
But not in book form, declare Rowling and Warner.
"I believe that RDR’s book constitutes a Harry Potter ‘rip off’ of the type I have spent years trying to prevent, and that both I, as the creator of this world, and fans of Harry Potter, would be exploited by its publication," Reuters has her saying.
The lawsuit filed in October names RDR Books, an independent publisher based in Michigan, and unidentified persons as defendants, says the story, adding:
"It seeks to stop publication and requests damages for copyright and federal trademark infringement and any profits to be gained.
"Rowling has said she plans to write her own definitive Harry Potter encyclopedia, which would include material that did not make it into the novels, and donate the proceeds to charity."
Stay tuned.
Also See:
Reuters - J.K. Rowling says rival Potter book would exploit her, February 28, 2008
suing RDR Books - Rowling, Warner Bros, sue ‘Harry’ lexicon, November 1, 2007
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February 29th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
Why is it impossible for parties to compromise?
Maybe Rowling (her lawyers) could relax a bit and come to a deal whereby a small percentage of the take on the other dudes encyclopaedia Pottanicca can go to her chosen charity, rather than try and take a dump on the guys head. It would save a lot of work.
Harry Potter is about as original as the poo I do.
I’ve read more magical books written over 30 years ago, 30 years ago
February 29th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
This is completely ridiculous. How is this any different from Coles Notes, or any type of fact sheet listing key points about a piece of literature?
“Harry Potter is about as original as the poo I do.”
Damn right! Every single thing about Harry Potter—-magic/fantasy myths (witchcraft, trolls, dragons, etc), right down to the very plot devices used throughout have been copied from other works in one way or another.
February 29th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
“Billionaress Rowling” — that’s just hate-the-rich-because-they’re-rich bullshit, there. When exactly did quasi-Marxist bullshit become trendy? I mean, let’s be honest here: “Billionairess Rowling” has known hardshiip and outright poverty (she was on financial relief programs while her children were young, for example) — but SHE (unlike the vast majority of self-rigtheously indignant leeches who adovate p2p, for example) actually created something good. And now, when she DARES stipulate her wishes, the mewl-and-whimper brigade comes out of the woodwork. Niiiice.
Y’know what? How many of you would cheer if Richard Stallman prosecuted somebody for violating the GPL? How about if somebody violated a Creative Commons license?
Double-standards are fun, aren’t they? Violating the licence terms of Microsoft or putting content on p2p networks is sticking it to “the man”, but nobody better touch a “copyleft” licence that WE LIKE, because that would be EEEEEVIL.
Gimme a break, here — this site was always the digital equivalent of toilet-paper, but at least befoer it was the nice, soft, fluffy, two-ply kind.
February 29th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
Hi Henry:
How goes it with the hemorrhoids? Still keeping you up at night?
Cheers!
February 29th, 2008 at 10:39 pm
Just because she created the characters and the universe that they inhabit doesn’t mean that she can dictate who gets to write ABOUT that universe. Blocking a book just because she maybe plans to write something similar someday is just petty. Is she afraid that his book will be better than hers?
March 1st, 2008 at 9:15 am
How is it reasonable to block publication of a work which comments on another work? Let’s say that someone writes an article which is published in a newspaper. If Rouling gets her way, then any further articles annalizing that article could be blocked from publication because they infringe the copyright of the author of the first work. In short, public discourse, at least in published form, would come to a screaching halt.
I’m no legal expert, not by a long shot. However, its my guess that Rouling will lose this one, at least in the United States.
March 2nd, 2008 at 9:10 pm
Aaron, you are getting it all wrong…
What she’s doing is stopping some one from writing every fact there is in the Harry Potter series and selling it to make money, which is what RDR is doing. However, she condones people using her works in various ways: analyzing, criticizing, even writing fan fiction (she’s VERY permissive about that).
What she basically wants is to be the only person that writes the canonical books on/of Harry Potter, not RDR.
March 3rd, 2008 at 9:31 pm
Above, IR said: What she basically wants is to be the only person that writes the canonical books on/of Harry Potter, not RDR.
Erm, you know MuggleNet produced and published a book on Harry Potter and stuff. profiting off the hype of the “upcoming” book 7 (at the time)
It basically took articles and stuff off their website and put it into book form..
And that was allowed.
Okay the two are slightly different. *slightly*.
If the guy was trying to publish fanfic. Sure, *then* it becomes a problem. But all he want’s to do is establish a book form of his website. and how helpful would it be to Rowling then if she wanted to do a sequel series or another charity book, encyclopedia or not? that first quote… how helpful would this book have been then? she wouldn’t have needed to go to an internet cafe or embarrassingly buy her own book then!
Considering we all spend what, £5.99 on the paperbacks or £12.99 on the hardbacks, (some on both, and some on both adult cover and kids cover…) that’s £42 out of pocket. Some go to buy another copy after reprintings have fixed errors.
Dunno about US pricing.
Stevey boy has spent how much money on maintaining that website?
And the hosting companies have profited from that, presumably.
So how different is that from a publisher earning money for their work going into printing a book, the delivery guy getting paid to move said book, the guy who put the info together (steve in this case) and put it into book-format getting money for his time and effort?
I sure as hell dont see writers for Star Wars or Star Trek getting sued (okay it’s a different ball game there but still.)
I recall an author of a book series, called New FRontier. it’s based on Star Trek. Peter David. Now pocketbooks, the publishers - they decide who writes books for the series. they just dont see fit to take Peter David off of writing the books. Occasionally PD is asked to be a co-writer with others like with Gateway series ofwhich on is also a New FRontier book.
New Frontier is his series as much as Harry Potter is JKR’s. He came up with it’s concept. The races he made up for it. the stories and so on and so forth.
he’s got upto like 14 books or so now in the series - not really updated my collection in awhile.
And last i saw, he was all for people doing a Lexicon of it, and is not against ‘companions’ being made of it - since Star Trek Companions and Tech Manuals are such an integral part of a Trek’ Authors work in writing trek books.
And from what JKR said, the place in a trek writers’ work for those tech manuals. in Rowling, that is taken up by HP-Lexicon.org since HP doesnt have a companion.
So how different is this from someone saying to a different publisher “Hey I got this tech manual for Star Trek I wanna publish…”
Afterall, there are trek encyclopedia’s out there. Doesnt stop others from doing their own.
April 14th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
When Steven Vander Ark’s publisher, RDR Books, told him it was okay to publish a printed version of Vander Ark’s Harry Potter Lexicon Web site, which is largely derived from work by Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, Vander Ark accepted that without further question and proceeded with the project. That cavalier attitude is no surprise when one considers the source of Vander Ark’s Web site in the first place. When did it become okay to lift someone else’s copyrighted material and present it as one’s own? That’s why, “in the name of scholastic pursuit”, I’ve made a copy of Vander Ark’s Web site to use as my own Web site. Oh, it’s okay. I’ve changed the name of the site and reorganized it a little. My version is called Harry Potter’s Maxicon. Different enough, right?
Http://www.maxicon.org