Digg this
You give some people an inch, they take a mile and run into fantasy land.
Steven Vander Ark, a school librarian and obsessed Harry Potter fan, developed the Harry Potter Lexicon, an online encyclopedia of all things Hogwarts.
J.K. Rowling, the author of the hugely successful wizard series, praised his efforts and said it was so comprehensive, it even helped jog her memory while she was writing.
So what happened to all this goodwill?
Vander Ark decided to cash in. He received an advance from RDR Books to publish his encyclopedia, but oops, forgot to check with Rowling first.
So she sued him. As you do when people you try to help then try to steal from you.
Seriously, who does that?
Good-Will got nothing to do with it. It is a blatant copyright infringement. Intellectual propriety is paramount in my mind. This guy tries to bank on J.K. Rowling’s success? He deserve to be put back in his place.
I know, it’s appallingly blatant. I think somewhere along the line he forgot that his little project was based on someone else’s make-believe, not a historical figure of whom he can write a biography.
this is why people should make up their own lexicons based on anime.
just as it’s not illegal to download jpop songs, it is also not illegal to base your lexicon on the wide pantheon of gods, goddesses, bodhisattvas and buddhas from Japanese mythology.
plus, if you can pull off a good manga read and produce a great anime film, kids will be ready for the trading cards and merchandise.
however, it helps to know about japanese culture.
I mean, Rowling bases her works on a British lens on Hollywood magick with perhaps something from Tolkien and ripoffs of the Arthurian lengend.
plus she even had to invent code talk for youngsters, and bend reality a bit i.e. the concept of a world where most youngsters and adults speak RP in its many variations and have never really escaped the legendary magick purported to be of the European past.
and she does a bad job of it too.
that the kids lap it up only shows how gullible the child’s mind is, to believe in magick, in order to escape the boredom of everyday life in suburbia.
It is not necessarily an infringement of copyright. Copyright protects expression, not an idea. It does not protect names and it does not protect themes.
Provided that the quoted amounts are not disproportionate and are attributed properly, there ought not be a breach of copyright in an encyclopedia or other explanatory document. There is no copyright in a single word eg. “muggle”. Ms Rowling synthesized a good idea, expressed it well and received the recognition she deserved for her works. If people are simply outraged because someone else is “free riding” off her creative coat-tails, then consider that her work is largely derivative and does not attribute the foundational works from which her creative spark was inspired.
I am, by the way, a practicing counsel and intellectual property professor. Ms Rowling would be better off commencing an action to the effect that the other author has infringed her trademarks. Either way, her legal team will probably render the object of her wrath insolvent regardless as to merit, so the matter is not likely to proceed very far.
BTW - imagine the disturbing amount of slash fiction, fanfic and “Barry Trotter” esque parody out there. Such things are “original” and not “copies” for the purposes of a breach of copyright.
How gullible the child’s mind is? Boredom of suburbia? They’re kids Steve-o . I worry more about the adults that talk about Japanese anime, Arthurian legend, and spell magic with a k.
You know this guy?
http://failblog.wordpress.com/2008/04/04/militia-fail/