This is totally incredible. Steven Vander Ark was such a fan of Harry Potter he built an “Encyclopedia” website for the Harry Potter series. The website was so accurate J. K. Rowling used it to double check her facts while writing new material. According to the Associated Press, the website Harry Potter Lexicon Web was built in 2000 by Steven Vander Ark as a hobby. Since then J. K. Rowling nor her publisher had complained of copyright infringement until last year when she filed suit against Vander Ark and his publisher RDR to stop the publication of the Harry Potter Lexicon.
According to the AP, J.K. Rowling draws the line when it comes to publishing Harry Potter Lexicon and charging $24.95 for her material rewritten. RDR is not fighting that it’s a copyright infringement but the argument is the book was used for some greater purpose, a scholarly pursuit.
In my opinion, if the judge finds for RDR, all the authors are going to lose their copyrights. These books are fictional, meaning not true. There is no “scholarly” pursuit in my opinion. It is advantageous to have notes on the series as you read or to clarify if you have to do a paper for school. The new book is an infringement and J.K. Rowling at the very least should have been asked to let this new “writer”, Steven Vander Ark publish the material and share in her wealth.
This shouldn’t be allowed. If anyone should do an encyclopedia and time line it should have been J.K. Rowling. I do think she should have contacted Mr. Vander Ark about the website to let him know where she stood, and what she would allow and disallow. He should be happy with just having the website. I am sure he made money off of it. Even he knows this is a copyright infringement so I don’t understand why he let the publisher try to do this. I think the publisher is just hoping to make money off of this by trying to cut J.K. Rowling out of her share.
I went to the website and it is full of mentions of J.K. Rowling where as her concern was this book that is being published is not. She also feels being on the web is different than in print. The website gives time lines, spells, enchantments, and there is an introductory saying the spells aren’t real J.K. Rowling made them up for the book. The time lines are a good reference, I would be surprised if J.K. Rowling didn’t have one of her own laying around somewhere just to use as a reference. The website is good and maybe Mr. Van Ark should concentrate on writing a book with his own ideas. He must be imaginative to have laid out a website such as that. Check it out at http://www.hp-lexicon.org/.
I think J.K. Rowling will definitely win this case. Everyone involved agrees they are her words.
