Chapter 7

This week's post (ok last week's post that I forgot to make, but didn't have anything to say..) is about something we talked about in my English class. Copyright and Authorship on the web.

There is an on-going lawsuit between J.K. Rowling/Warner Brothers and RDR Books over the publication of an encyclopedia type book based on the Harry Potter Lexicon website written by the site's webmaster Steve Vander Ark.

Here is the article posted on the Leaky Cauldron about this issue.

I'll summarize it. The HP Lexicon is an online unofficial encyclopedia. It is well known in the Harry Potter fandom as one of the best places to find information about the HP books and other parts of the HP fandom. What I mean is, 99% of the information is pulled directly from the books and presented in an easily searchable way.

J.K. Rowling herself gave this website her "fansite award" for Steve Vander Ark's dedication.

Now, the webmaster wants to publish the Harry Potter Lexicon in print form. That is, publish an encyclopedia for the Harry Potter books. And, J.K. Rowling has responded. It has never been a secret, or a very well kept one anyway, that she plans to release her own encyclopedia. She mentioned it in an interview she did with PotterCast (Leaky's podcast), and I believe it was mentioned a while ago on a Biography interview show where they filmed her house and she showed some drawings and books and things. This material is what is mentioned in the PotterCast interview as 'some' things that would be in her "Scottish Book" (the attempt at hiding the intent to publish an encyclopedia).

So, part of the argument on the side of Steve's Lexicon is that there are other books published about the series with no lawsuits.

This is true, there are. But they don't reprint word for word the books in the series. The 2 that come to my mind are Mugglenet's What Will Happen In Harry Potter 7, which is an analysis of popular theories about things that may or may not happen in the 7th book, which was written even before the title of book 7 was released. If something from the book is mentioned, its quoted. Otherwise, its the 3 author's opinion as to the big questions of what would be in the last book. The other is called The Great Snape Debate, which is a 2 sided book, one side talks about the reasons that the character Severus Snape is "good", and if you flip it over and upside down, the other side the explanation and theory on why Snape is "bad". I have the mugglenet one, and only glanced at the Snape book. Neither one infringes on copyright because they don't pull text from the books for the majority of their book, and if they do use text, they quote it. I believe they have sources at the end as well.

So the question of copyright arises. J.K. Rowling wrote the books, therefore has full copyright of the characters, and the world that she created.

Steve Vander Ark compiled the Lexicon. Where he states he's not the author, and originally made a statement that he put his webpage online so that others wouldn't try to publish an unofficial encyclopedia because J.K. Rowling should be able to do that herself.

Now, i'm all for his website. You can tell he put a lot of time and effort into it, gathered other fans to help, and produced a great resource for Harry Potter fans. However I don't believe he should be able to publish a print version of his website. Why would someone pay for something they've been looking at for free for years? And something that isn't official, yet being passed off as the definitive Harry Potter encyclopedia.

There were also statements made by RDR Books and Vander Ark that fans would buy both. Um no. Personally, I would wait however long for the official J.K.R encyclopedia. She says she'll publish one, so she will when she's ready. I can wait.

I wouldn't buy the Lexicon book even if JKR never releases her own encyclopedia. I have seen the website, if I want to look something up, I'll go there. Or, I'll re-read the books. Or listen to the audio books. Or watch one of the movies. Or go to another site where the webmasters aren't trying to gain profit on something that isn't their's and that they wouldn't even have if the books had never been written.

I think, even if Vander Ark is able to publish his book (which I doubt.. but still, for arguement's sake), he'll lose money on it anyway. Especially after this lawsuit. It makes him look HORRIBLE! He makes the members of the fandom look bad. He makes webmasters who put up honest pages look bad. What fan would buy into something like that? Although it would be fun to see what he'd say should his book be published and then flop...

And I'll end my rant there...