Harry Potter Smackdownimus! JK Rowling Not Laughing About Lexicon
Filed under: Warner Brothers, Celebrities and Controversy, Fandom, Harry Potter
One of the most popular Harry Potter websites, the Harry Potter Lexicon, has gotten on the bad side of series author JK Rowling over plans to publish the site as a book. Website ars technica reports that Rowling and Warner Brothers have teamed up to sue the publisher of the Harry Potter Lexicon, RDR Books. Steve Vander Ark, the lead publisher of the online Lexicon, wants to publish in book form a compilation of all the materials from the website, but Rowling, who has in the past praised the website and been on friendly terms with Vander Ark, apparently is none-too-pleased about a print version of the material.Rowling's side of the argument revolves around the point that while she was fine with the Lexicon's online version, because it is freely available and no one is making money off it, a print version crosses the line because there's money involved now. Rowling posted the following on her website on November 9:
Lexicon Continued
As you may have read, on 8 November, 2007 a judge in New York granted an order against RDR Books in respect to the proposed book The Harry Potter Lexicon, such order applying to any proposed licensing of the book worldwide.
Judge Patterson has imposed a restraining order on the publishers of the Lexicon, which will remain in place until at least February 2008. This means that the book can not be completed, published or marketed until the court has had time to decide whether it would break the law if published in its present form.
I take no pleasure in the fact that publication has been prevented for the present. On the contrary, I feel massively disappointed that this matter had to come to court at all. Despite repeated requests, the publishers have refused to even countenance making any changes to the book to ensure that it does not infringe my rights.
Unless their position changes, we will all return to court next year. Given my past good relations with the Lexicon fansite, I can only feel sad and disillusioned that this is where we have ended up.
The Lexicon, for its part, has this November 4 blog entry from Vander Ark about the Lexicon:
My book was started in response to many, many people who talked to me and asked if there could be a print version of the Lexicon, not in some sort of attempt to profit off of fans. Because the material for the book was not only accepted but praised and used frequently by every entity concerned with creating the Harry Potter books, games, and films, I would never have thought that a print version could be judged differently.
The entry links to the RDR website, but the entry for the book has been taken down.
Rowling is reportedly upset in part because she has plans to create her own companion piece to the series, the profits of which she would donate to charity. Over on Machinst at Salon.com, though, Farhad Manjoo isn't impressed:
"Yet surely she owes her fans something -- surely Rowling owes them at least the opportunity to make a living off their work on her behalf (especially as she won't lose a single dime in the process).
The big news from the world of Harry Potter isn't that Dumbledore is gay. It's that J.K. Rowling is greedy."
I don't know where I fall on this, exactly. I'm a big fan of Harry Potter, and admire JK Rowling (and, admittedly, am envious of the size of her bank account). Rowling has made a mint off her stories, to be sure, but if she really intends to donate profits from her own companion piece to charity, it's hard to argue that she's being greedy rather than just protecting her work. On the other hand, if Vander Ark can make a substantive argument that his work is an intellectual study or analysis of the work, then he might be able to make a case ... and line his own coffers as well.
What sayeth you, Harry Potter fans? Is Rowling being greedy, or is Vander Ark trying to profit on Rowling's work?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
11-14-2007 @ 7:04PM
eugene said...
that's rich, Rowling owes it to "fans" mooch off her work and make their own money.
It's her world, she wrote it, folk bought it... that's about it for what she "owes" her fans.
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11-14-2007 @ 7:20PM
Nathan said...
You didn't ask permission and you got caught and now you whinge that it went to court.
JK wrote the books and if all you are writing about is the universe created by her then basically you gotta accept her wishes. It doesn't matter how much money she may or may not have you have to get permission or pay to use the universe she created.
She is writing an encyclopedia of sorts and donating the proceeds to charity. So by the same ridiculous argument that they make of JK being greedy, you could say that they would be stealing from charity.
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11-15-2007 @ 2:16AM
Wexler said...
This is old news. It was posted at http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/ last week. You can go there for more detailed information as it unfolds.
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11-15-2007 @ 2:58AM
bkwormsjv said...
It's easy to call people with money greedy. But I think none of us would like someone taking our ideas and going against our express wishes to put them out in the world. Since it has been said that Rowling intends to do her own encyclopedia, it makes perfect sense to me that she would want the information out there to be the official version.
As for the money part of it... I don't buy the Lexicon argument that they were compiling the book by popular request and that they were unaware of how this might cause problems. Even if they received requests for the information, Rowling's version will provide all the information those people might want, and will do it more completely than his version could- there should be no reason (based on his stated intention) for him to persist. And as for not realizing how much trouble a print version would cause, how unaware can you be of the difficulties if you're being brought to court over them, after repeated requests to "cease and desist"?
I'm going to need much more than that before I'll defend the Lexicon position.
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11-16-2007 @ 11:13AM
Daisy said...
People call JKR greedy for this, but what if the case were different? What if someone had written a book chronicling every major event in a novel written by some unknown author, who was still poor enough to have to work somewhere else to bay the bills? Would that be okay?
Of course it wouldn't. People would be up in arms that anyone would even think of stealing profits from the poor, unknown artist.
Americans love to root for the under-dog, but sometimes the under-dog can be in the wrong.
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11-27-2007 @ 11:48AM
Cristine Gordon said...
I understand JK Rowlings need to protect her work but in this case I think she is being really greedy. But she is being greedy in regards to it is not about the money or the fact that she is giving the profits to charity but about her needing to control every aspect of Harry Potter on her terms as much as possible. But my question is simply this... if every author took this stance where would all the college students be right now if they had no cliff notes on any of the books our professors assigned us? I bet half of the graduates out there would still be in school!!! JK Rowling needs to take a good look at what this book would mean to her fans and how it simply praises what a wonderful job she has done that someone would actually want to make the effort to study her work and create something that would give even more to her fans. My final statement is this to think about... she claims this will take away from her companion book she plans to write... please show me one person with the option of buying one or the other who would buy "cliff notes" to her companion book!
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