It’s been absolutely thrilling to have Harry Potter in the news again.
These past few weeks, author J.K. Rowling has been in court to block the publication of an encyclopedia based on her series. She claims the encyclopedia constitutes copyright infringement and that its publication would thwart her plans to write a similar one for charity.
The publishing house behind the encyclopedia claims that it should not need the approval of the author to write about her work, as such requirements would block the progress of critical commentary about literature.
As biased as I am toward anything J.K. Rowling says, does or writes, this issue was blurry to me.
The accused infringer, Steve Vander Ark, is basically just trying to publish material that has been on his Harry Potter Lexicon Web site for years. The Lexicon, an unauthorized online encyclopedia of Rowling’s wizard world, has won awards and recognition from Rowling herself. According to Associated Press articles, Vander Ark was even invited to the set of the fifth movie. He also apparently started crying when Rowling testified against him: He’s just a big fan; who can blame him for being inspired by Harry Potter?
Apparently he crossed the line in trying to make money off of Rowling’s work. The online encyclopedia is free, and while I’m sure he makes money from advertisements, the money from publishing is far greater. And like Rowling claims, those sales would cut into potential sales for her charity book.
Tons of people have already made money off of J.K. Rowling. There are countless books about the philosophy of Harry Potter and about its impact on Western civilization, as well as several tasteless parodies (I’m talking about Barry Trotter, which I couldn’t read more than two chapters of because of its blatant blasphemy).
However, Rowling told the BBC that the encyclopedia provides almost no commentary or analysis, it “takes too much and gives far too little.” This book, she is claiming, is strictly a rip-off, without enough original material.
In its online format, the Lexicon also did not and does not provide original analysis. But on the Internet, Rowling didn’t view it as competition; she viewed it as the enthusiastic, laborious work of a fan. But information doesn’t compete in one format anymore. CD sales are weakened by online song files, GPS devices make paper maps archaic and, in the publishing industry, travel books are hurt by online hotel rankings.
Attacking Vander Ark for reformatting information that has been available for years seems to ignore the original wrongdoing. The matter of profits is important, but focusing on print-only rip-offs is old-fashioned. The encyclopedia Rowling wants to write for charity would not just compete with other print books ““ the online lexicon would still feature similar facts. Actually paying for the information, whether to Rowling or Vander Ark, would be charity in itself.
If you will stand by Rowling through thick and thin, e-mail Crocker at acrocker@media.ucla.edu.