“RDR’s “bad faith” actions (ignoring cease-and-desist letters, responding by claiming copyright on the Harry Potter timeline, and offering rights to the book to German and Taiwanese publishers while asking for more time to respond to WB because of a family emergency) is cause for injunctive relief.”
I’ll say it is. That’s really horrible. :<
I really can’t believe that all this is happening, though! As somebody who has dedicated so much of his time to documenting Harry Potter, it’s understandable that Mr. Vander Ark would want to take it to the next level, I suppose, but that being said.. it’s Jo’s world! She owns it, creatively and legally, and beyond all this talk of injuctions and copyrights, the fact that he is going against her wishes when he cares so deeply about her work is very contradictory and disheartening. Especially on the subject of him making a profit versus the money going to charity.
This man is SAD!
I mean really, cause he couldn’t help he set out for revenge.
He speaks in a thing on the “Special Feachers” disk of OotP, and he sound like one of those people whos whole life is devoted to HP, I love HP but, I’m not THAT obbsessed!
9. A rule against JKR/WB would harm the fan community by “necessitating more monitoring and restriction of fan activity by copyright owners afraid of compromising their rights against infringers.”
Hmmm, this paragraph could prove very interesting in the long term.
I don’t understand how Jo Rowling could be “scooped” either.
Melissa, and the members of the leaky staff, thank you for keeping us so well informed, and for remaining publicly neutral in this unfortunate situation
I think that this is a bad situation for all concerned and I hope that it is resolved soon. I would not buy this encyclopedia even if Jo had endorsed it because I would rather wait for the one written by her.
@Matt
So, it´s not about HP but about JKR. Very interesting. A case of personality cult.
I have to admire you guys for remaining so neutral. I understand how hard it must be.
I personally still side with Jo. Nothing about it seems unreasonable.And the fact that Steve himself once acknowledged that it would be illegal seems fishy to me. Did he get a bit full of himself?
To the people who are saying Steve is out of line:
I don’t think that’s how it started out. As we’ve all seen, Steve’s been VERY cautious in the past of using Jo’s material commercially. I think this is (mostly) a matter of a small-time publishing company getting carried away with what could have been their biggest success. I’m 100% sure they knew the book would not be endorsed by Jo, and I believe they had almost everything to do with the horrible handling of the situation.
Peppa, lol. That’s all I have to say.
sigh This is so stupid. RDR Books should have just given in; they’re publishing COPYRIGHTED material. Maybe I don’t understand it perfectly, but it seems to me that they haven’t got a chance. Saying that Jo endorsing the website gives them the right to print the book is crap, too.
Steve Vander Ark says: ” I wasn’t really thinking of collaborating, just working somewhere in the organization,”
There is no “organisation”, Steve. There’s just Jo Rowling, writing an encyclopedia on her invented world sometime in the future. The web Lexicon has volunteers providing a lot of work and input, but Jo’s encyclopedia will be a one-woman effort.
If Jo need any help of any kind she has people working for her, her agency and her publishers whom she knows and has worked with before. There’s no reason she should turn to a person she hasn’t even met, even if that person knows a lot of Potteriana. And, I might add, even if that person hadn’t said in public that Jo was “finished” and should step back, and let the fans take over, as well as trying to publish a book against her wishes.
RDR has behaved very badly, but that’s still Steve’s fault. Ultimately, he chose them for the project, he chose badly. Even worse still is his admission that publishing the Lexicon would be illegal, he should have kept that in mind.
This whole situation isn’t fun for anyone, least of all Steve & the peeps at the Lexicon. Hopefully, it will be resolved before they end up in court. JKR has every right to insist on her possession of copyrighted material.
The thing I just can’t understand about this is how any fan would go against Jo’s wishes. She created this whole Potter universe, which has given joy to millions of fans. It’s so sad that people will do anything for money. Any true fan would rather have the proper encyclopedia, not a fan one with no new information.
So regrettable but still fascinating. I’m most interested, along with Interested Fan above, in point: 9. A rule against JKR/WB would harm the fan community by “necessitating more monitoring and restriction of fan activity by copyright owners afraid of compromising their rights against infringers.” So many posters on this site and others have said that a victory for RDR/Vander Ark would spell the end for the fandom by meaning that sites etc. would be restricted. WB/JKR here claim the opposite – that a victory by RDR/Vander Ark would actually be much more destructive to the fandom. Echoing budb (always a reasonable voice) and others to thank TLC for their great reporting.
Sad, very sad that it has all come to this.
Reading Jo’s statement, one thing struck me. She says,
“I understand that the prposed book is neither commentary nor criticism of the Harry Potter series – either of which would be entirely legitimate – but instead lists in alphabetical order the various fictional characters and things in the Harry Potter universe. “
Now there are a number of JRR Tolkien encyclopadia published that do just that. I assume they may have the estate’s permission but it seems a fine line to draw between commentary and criticism particularly when these two features are often blurred in many of such encyclopaedia.
Whether Jo has been “scooped” seems, to me, to be neither here nor there. Either she has the legal right to stop such publications or she does not.