I would like to thank each and every one of you for your support in recent days. Everyone here at the Lexicon, all volunteers, regrets the unpleasantness. We have always been interested in working with the publishers of the novels to satisfy their concerns, interests and needs and we certainly do not plan nor have we ever planned to publish anything which competes with Ms. Rowling’s fine literary capabilities. Our work has nothing to do with fiction writing and is only concerned with legitimate critical analysis and academic considerations. It has been widely approved and employed by Ms. Rowling herself.
My book was started in response to many, many people who talked to me and asked if there could be a print version of the Lexicon, not in some sort of attempt to profit off of fans. Because the material for the book was not only accepted but praised and used frequently by every entity concerned with creating the Harry Potter books, games, and films, I would never have thought that a print version could be judged differently.
I sincerely hope that this matter can be resolved amicably and ask for you patience and understanding during that process.
Other new details are as follows: Following yesterday’s post which said there was a possibility that essays would be included in the Lexicon, several Lexicon essay writers have publicly said that they were not asked for permission to have their essay reprinted, and some essay writers have been assured by Lexicon staff that there will be no essays in the book at all. We have asked the publisher which is correct and will amend this post if we get an answer.
Update: RDR books answered our query with a lengthy statement that neither confirmed nor denied. We’ve asked for a more direct answer and have yet to receive one.
Update 2: TLC has received word via a reliable source that the initial email to Steve Vander Ark and RDR Books was phrased as an attempt to appeal to the Lexicon’s status as a site favored by J.K. Rowling. It also, according to the source, clearly named Warner Bros. as at stake and called Vander Ark a friend of the series and someone publishers/lawyers/agents were sure did not want to disrupt Rowling’s rights. RDR has called the email “threatening and abusive” and claimed that Warner Bros. only claimed rights after RDR sent them a letter regarding the timeline on the Harry Potter DVDs.
Also in the time since this issue began the book has risen from ranked lower than 230,000 in Amazon.co.uk books, to 7,034 as of this posting.
Update 3: A reader has commented that they ordered the book in the UK, which was slated to have a Nov. 5, 2007, publication date; the order was pushed back to January, 4, 2008, instead.
The Harry Potter Lexicon is a partner site to The Leaky Cauldron. The opinions and claims argued here do not constitute The Leaky Cauldron’s opinion or claim (of which it has none).
Dear Loopy:
An example of an artist who doesn’t allow other uses of his images is Bill Waterson, who created the strip Calvin and Hobbes. I copied and pasted the following from Wikipedia:
“Because of Watterson’s strong anti-merchandising sentiments4 and his reluctance to return to the spotlight, almost no legitimate Calvin and Hobbes merchandise exists outside of the book collections. Some officially approved items were created for marketing purposes and are now sought by collectors.[5] Two notable exceptions to the licensing embargo were the publication of two 16-month wall calendars and the textbook Teaching with Calvin and Hobbes.[6] However, the strip’s immense popularity has led to the appearance of various “bootleg” items, including T-shirts, keychains, bumper stickers, and window decals, often including obscene language or references wholly uncharacteristic of the whimsical spirit of Watterson’s work.”
Just a little note here for those that mentioned Steve putting a print button on his site. You can print it out, page by page, from your browser toolbar if you want to do just that. You can do that with any web page or site. Check your browser toolbar for the print button.
As long as no one knows what exactly the printed Lexicon edition might contain, there is no way of judging this situation with the least degree of certainty. Our personal emotions might be misleading us – this is about law, which follows its own logic and philosophy. All we can judge at the moment are the public statements made by the parties involved – and my personal impression is that RDR’s utterances are far from being professional. Their strange imputations (“international smear campaign”?!) might mirror a guilty conscience – or simply result from other influences unknown to me.
And one last point: To give you an idea what the criteria for “academic” or “critical” publications on Harry Potter might be, take a look at Viola Owlfeather’s Harry Potter Bibliography:
http://www.eulenfeder.de/hpliteratur.html
Max, I agree with you, and without the detailed info any discussion here is just smoke. And yes, RDR does seem the least professional (listen to your lawyers, folks, and just maintain a dignified silence!)
How can you the that the Lexicon’s timeline doesn’t use one of the other HP timelines availabe on the web (like the popular German http://hpzeittafel.de.vu/ )?
The idea that people would individually print out an entire site that’s hundreds or thousands of pages long is ridiculous. There is obvious value in offering it in book form for those who want it. It costs money to publish a physical book. If you want to put one out there, you charge money for it. That’s certainly what Jo has done and she’s become wealthy beyond all imagining by doing so. It’s not like she oh so generously published the HP series on a blog or forum somewhere.
Also, there is no way that publishing the lexicon can be construed as ‘ripping off fans’ – unless you also think Jo’s encyclopedia will be ‘ripping off fans’. So far we’ve gotten info that was left out of the books via her web site and interviews. Why should she put the rest in a book format and charge for it when she could just keep giving it out for free? I’d hope everyone agrees that is a ridiculous argument. It’s ridiculous in regards to the lexicon as well. If you don’t want either or both of the books, don’t buy them. If you do, it’s hardly ‘ripping you off’.
Also, people whining on about SVA starting to feel ‘entitled’ should really look at their own hypocrisy. Anyone getting info from the web is making use of things that don’t ‘belong to’ them (from the corporate point of view), for free or a reduced cost: the news articles, the video clips, the photographs, the music, etc. If you had to go out and BUY all those newspapers and magazines and subscribe to cable tv to see celebrity appearances and go to all the events yourself (some of which are overseas), etc., you’d be broke in a week. All this corporate grabbing of ‘rights’ to information and material and the means of interactive communication would make it illegal for any of you to see, read or listen to anything of value (or to have these kinds of conversations online) without paying through the nose in every individual instance. You’re feeding into a devastating trend. Just recently Jo reminded people to question authority. In this case, she, WB and her team of lawyers are the authority.
Le’ts not again have the argument that because she’s wealthy she loses her rights. That’s ridiculous.
And question authority, yes. Ignore COMMON SENSE, no.
The Lexicon is claiming they’re donig it for the fans, who oh so badly want him to put it in print format. Seriously. I mean, seriously, that’s what they’re saying. I’ve seen no clamoring for this, and if Steve has gotten some emails about it over the years – to which, check it out, he responded to by saying it’s ILLEGAL to publish that book – then he’s let a couple of requests be mistaken for the demanding masses. Which is sad and arrogant.
If their only reason for publishing is so that the fans have a print copy, then give all proceeds to charity. Put it on a site like Lulu.com, which will only charge for the cost of publishing. Sell it at cost, swear you’re not making any profit.
I think silence would have served Steve better, if this is all he has had to say. With his statement, he has now not only insulted JKR, WB and occasional lurkers of his site, but also his true fans and supporters, and quite possibly all those staffers who have slaved just as hard as he has, to make the Lexicon a moderately comprehensive resource for fans of the Harry Potter books and movies. When I first got wind of this story, I had to shake my head and wonder where in the world anyone would get the idea to do something like this, because it is blatantly a copyright violation. Steve is a fan of the books, and somewhere along the way, he had the drive and ambition to start compiling book facts into a guide for other fans. My feeling is no one asked him to create this website; no one twisted his arm to maintain it, so when did he begin developing this sense of entitlement that he was owed something for all his hard work? What about all the volunteers and contributors to the Lexicon? Have they been promised profits from the book for all their hard work, or do all proceeds to go him? Kudos to Steve for the amount of work he has poured into the Lexicon, but he didn’t do it alone, and he didn’t do it because he was forced to do it. If he was hired by either JKR or WB to create and maintain this site, then yes, I would better understand where he would have got this notion that he was owed something more, but as it stands, he took a work that had been created by someone else, extracted useful, quick-reference information for himself and other fans, and did nothing more or less than that.
RE: I’m sick of the steve bashing. The best post I have seen about this from a non-hp fan was posted by William Patry (a copyright lawyer). There are also some interesting comments.
The problem with taking that lawyer’s point of view seriously is that he is counsel to corporation (Google) that has been working to weaken copyright law so that the text of copyrighted works can be included in search engine results. Mr. Patry has a vested interest in seeing existing copyright law (and JK Rowlling’s existing rights in Harry Potter) undermined.
Posted by trademark lawyer on November 05, 2007, 05:49 PM
report to moderator
. . . and Patry’s analysis of the applicable copyright law is questionable (I tried to restrain myself from saying it, but I can’t. His analysis is wrong).
Posted by trademark lawyer on November 05, 2007, 05:57 PM
report to moderator
“The problem with taking that lawyer’s point of view seriously is that he is counsel to corporation (Google) that has been working to weaken copyright law so that the text of copyrighted works can be included in search engine results. Mr. Patry has a vested interest in seeing existing copyright law (and JK Rowlling’s existing rights in Harry Potter) undermined.”
Well, that makes sense, since everything he said directly opposes all the other lawyer opinions (from people involved in the fandom , not WK/JKR lawyers) that were posted on the matter.
"My father's next door buying my books and mother's up the street looking at wands," said the boy. He had a bored, drawling voice. "Then I'm going to drag them off to look at racing brooms. I don't see why first years can't have their own. I think I'll
Dear Loopy: An example of an artist who doesn’t allow other uses of his images is Bill Waterson, who created the strip Calvin and Hobbes. I copied and pasted the following from Wikipedia: “Because of Watterson’s strong anti-merchandising sentiments4 and his reluctance to return to the spotlight, almost no legitimate Calvin and Hobbes merchandise exists outside of the book collections. Some officially approved items were created for marketing purposes and are now sought by collectors.[5] Two notable exceptions to the licensing embargo were the publication of two 16-month wall calendars and the textbook Teaching with Calvin and Hobbes.[6] However, the strip’s immense popularity has led to the appearance of various “bootleg” items, including T-shirts, keychains, bumper stickers, and window decals, often including obscene language or references wholly uncharacteristic of the whimsical spirit of Watterson’s work.”