J.K. Rowling has won her case against Steven Vander Ark, the writer of The Harry Potter Lexicon. I was a big fan of the website, and used it quite a lot to get some of the subtler connections in the books when I was reading them. I’m a fan of Harry Potter, you see. I think it’s an excellent example of its genre. I used to be a big fan of J.K. Rowling too, before she showed herself to be little but a petty bully.

The gist of Rowling’s case was that the Lexicon was not ‘transformative’ enough, although to read through some of the case transcripts, most of the arguments seemed to be based around the idea that it wasn’t suitably ’scholarly’, making the argument sound a lot more like snobbery than copyright law.

The fairest I can be to Rowling is to suggest that what irked her most is that this book took a lot of its contents from the information found outside the novels, in the books she’d written for charity. Alongside this, she was intending to write a lexicon of her own, with the profits also going to charity. I imagine she felt that people might buy Ark’s work instead of the official versions, thereby reducing charitable profits.

But is this really likely to be the case? I am a fan of the Harry Potter books. There’s even a chance that I might have bought Ark’s book, although I’d rather have continued to use the website if I’m honest (something that Rowling herself has said she had done, even giving it an award in 2004). But would this have affected my chances of buying Rowling’s book one way or the other? I severely doubt it.

Considering how much scorn was thrown at Ark and his work during the trial, it seems strange that this appears to be the crux of the argument. Rowling and her team essentially seemed to be arguing either that the Lexicon was so bad that it didn’t deserve to be published since it didn’t add anything already present in the books, or that it was good enough to take sales away from the official version. Otherwise the suggestion appears to be that her fans are so ignorant to not notice Rowling’s own name on an official version and confuse it with Ark’s unofficial and inferior work. Either way, it doesn’t paint her attitude to Ark or any of her other fans in a good light.

Copyright is there to protect authors from people selling their work for profit that they authors or their representatives do not see. But Ark was not attempting to sell copies of Rowling’s work, he just wanted to categorise the world in a way the most ardent fans would enjoy, and judging from the website, he was likely to have done a pretty passable job. The fact that Rowling had the intention, at some point in the future, of doing something similar for charity is entirely irrelevant.

Whatever the arguments, Rowling has won the case. But in the process I feel she has come across as an aggressive bully. She has victimised a man who was nothing other than a particularly zealous fan of her work and would probably have made very little from the publication anyway. She and her team have overreacted to what was a very small-scale book anyway and have trampled over the important allowances for fair use enshrined in US copyright law. Considering the huge amounts of money she has made from her fans, you would have thought that she could have treated this one a little better.

Read more about the case on Ars Technica.

So September 9^th marks the day that just about all California school children go back to school, if they haven’t already done so.  With them go many of my hopes.  I still hold on to faith.  I still believe.  But it’s getting harder to stay strong.

Some author that I can’t recall right now wrote about a ‘season in hell’ as a sort of passage that we all have to go through in our lives.  My season has been lasting now many seasons, or so it seems.  Without being overly dramatic, I can say quite truthfully that the past couple years have been very difficult.  Things used to come so easily to me- I hardly ever seemed to have to try.  Now, everything seems hard won.

So be it.  I will not despair.  Not yet.  I’m waiting for that Eucatastrophy that Tolkien so often wrote about.  The unforeseen turn to good even when things seem to be utterly lost. 

Other notes:

J.K. Rowling won her court battle against Steven Vander Ark, the creator of the online Harry Potter Encyclopedia.  Vander Ark was attempting to publish a book version of the online lexicon but Rowling sued claiming that Vander Ark basically just cut and paste her own work (with little or no references) and thus the book would be a violation of copyright laws.  

Rowling detractors cite her initial support of the Vander Ark website, claiming that once he moved to publish it in book form (where the money is) she only then showed resistance.  Rowling has claimed all along that it’s not about money, but rather about upholding copyright laws- she has stated for quite some time that she wants to publish her own Potter encyclopedia, promising to give the proceeds to charity.  I believe her.

My take on it is this (in short): if Steven Vander Ark takes the time to go over the entire manuscript of his book and basically re-write it- putting it all into his own words- rather than simply pulling Rowling’s text at length (the copying and pasting he was accused of doing) then I think that the ruling (and Rowling) would have no claim against its publication.  Put another way, Vander Ark can still eventually publish an HP encyclopedia- he just has a little more work to do (and perhaps now little motivation to do so).  Perhaps Vander Ark is hoping for a Eucatastrophy too.

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More publishing news.  The Jewel of Medina has finally found a publisher with the balls to publish the book.  It has been put on hold by more than one publisher for reasons based on fear that Islamic zealots would incite violence upon its publication.  The book is about one of the Muslim Prophet Mohammad’s wives, Aisha.  The novel follows her life from when she was six years old, that’s when she became engaged to Mohammad (a grown man), until the prophet’s death.

Two points on this.  One:  I think the book might very well incite violence from certain members of the Islamic community, so I admire the publisher’s courage (if indeed it be courage.)  Two: even if it’s just rumors, how many more examples of violence tied to Islam do we need before we begin to discount it altogether?  “…And you shall know them by their fruits.”

Try to think of a Christian analogy.  When the farce of a movie “The Last Temptation of Christ” was released, was there any fear that it would incite riots?  Were there attempts made on the life or family of the director?  Was anything bombed?  I don’t recall anything of the sort, nor would I expect there to be.  Yet, with Islam, I have no such assurance to civility.

Ask Salman Rushdie about the very real threat of violence under the Islamic shadow for having written something they find disagreeable. 

Perhaps it’s just me.  After all, it’s just my thoughts written here in some disarray.  Be easy on me.

I dig Harry Potter as much as the next guy – and this particular blog plays with a lot of the themes, but Jeezez, Steven Vander Ark needs to get a life and quit acting like a Grade-A fuckstick. Getting hard over spell etymology or planning to work as a guide for a travel company giving Harry Potter-themed tours in Europe is just fuckin’ pathetic.

When not sobbing on the stand (fuck me freddy), Vander Ark states that he was leery of publishing his lexicon, but was “talked into it” by the publisher. Bullshit. RDR gave a big fat check, bent him over and now look what’s happening.

The only individual who should be putting a Harry Potter lexicon together is J.K. herself. Not some loser turd from Michigan – yeah, that’s right – same fuckin’ numbnut state that mucked up a Democratic presidential primary.

I like how J.K. has handled this. I dig her threat of not doing her own lexicon if a jerkoff like Vander Ark is allowed to do his. Let the masses deal with this greedy little pig for her.

I respect that.

It may not be J.K. shoes embedded in Vander Ark’s nuts, but the effect will still be the same.

I saw this story on CNN and all I could think about was Ridiculous Press and Martha Stewart.  Apparently some Harry Potter fan, Steven Vander Ark, wants to publish a Harry Potter lexicon encyclopedia, and J.K. Rowling, the author of the Potter books, is preemptively suing for copyright infringement.  Unlike the 1L first semester memo, there isn’t a defensive claim of parody and J.K. Rowling claims that publishing Vander Ark’s encyclopedia would infringe on her potential market share as she plans to publish her own encyclopedia.  Rowling commented that if Vander Ark’s lexicon is published, “I’m not at all convinced that I would have the will or the heart to continue with my encyclopedia,” she said. She also noted that she has stopped working on a new novel because of this case.  For any of you that doesn’t have a job yet, loves Harry Potter, and couldn’t get enough of the memo problem this year, here’s your opportunity to move to New York and volunteer your expansive knowledge of copyright law to help Rowling.