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I feel rather sad for Vander Ark who is quite young in worldy terms and can easily see him seduced by suits and ties in a serious publishing house. I just don’t think he had the strength or requisite wit of a suit who could talk him into the small but admirable glory of publishing a lexicon. The same suits would have assured him too about the legal implications. It’s all very Slytherin and Helga Hufflepuff would not like the animosity drummed up by the case. What a pity; if he had sat down and done the hard slog of writing the ‘paedia in his own words, we’d all buy a copy. A sad thing but I hope things will heal for Vander Ark and the community to which he belonged.

So we got punked? Haha. The joke’s on Wu.

I stand behind every comment I have made with regard to this issue.

I am not one to use the word “disown” lightly either. To say that we’ve disowned SVA would mean that we have owned him in the first place. I hate to say it, but SVA can still be a fan since no one has the right to tell us what we can and can’t like/read/watch on tv etc… Now is he the type of fan that we would rally around and support? That answer is no. SVA has crossed over from an appreciator or lover of the books to a person with an obsession and that obsession has driven him to make some terrible (and costly) decisions. And as for this garbage of our fear of access to creative material will dry up blah blah blah, who is he kidding? All you have to do is go to a book store! The books are there! Buy one and voila, you have the “creative material” in your hot little hands. The only way we wouldn’t have creative material is if JKR said that’s it, I’m packing it in and retiring. And I don’t foresee that happening any time soon.

I have read the trial transcripts and many of the comments. SVA broke ranks with the fan base when he decided to profit from his ‘work’. I have not gone to the Lexicon site and don’t intend to. I have read all the books over and over. JKR has made a wonderful world for us to live in through her writing, much like Disney and Tolkien and Herbert. My point is that I enjoy the books and the story, I have fallen in love with the lives of the characters and no one can explain the world that is Harry Potter but the creator, JK Rowling. When she writes a ‘lexicon’, or encyclopedia, I will buy it and read it. As for the on line world of Harry Potter, I come here and go to JKR’s site. I would hope that SVA and the publisher would take notice that if published, most of us would not purchase a work not endorsed by JKR. Copywrite issue and the expert Wus’ of the world aside.

SVA has received too much attention. I think it’s now clear that he enjoys it too much and was even willing to be seen in a seriously bad light in order to get it. Just because several thousand people (many of them kids) within Potter fandom know your name doesn’t mean that can be exploited in the name of JKR.

He comes across as a spoiled brat even though he’s 50. Of course I don’t know him, hardly anyone here does, so it’s definitely unfair to judge him as a person. But you’d think he’d want to stay on the fans’ good side. He can give as many excuses as he wants but you can’t deny he had some sort of chip on his shoulder about Jo from the get go. Maybe more has gone on than was brought up in court. There are DEFINITELY secrets being held back by certain people, people who have been backtracking and trying to seem on the fence when in fact they have similar plans of their own to make copious volumes of cash from Jo in a similar way.

Personally, I don’t have a problem with Steve profiting from a Harry Potter based book or endeavor. Many people within the community make money off of HP, so I think we’d be a bit hypocritical to only point the finger at Steve only.

My problem with the Lexicon is that is it poorly written and poorly cited. It’s plagiarising at it’s most basic form.

My problem with Steve is that he didn’t think this through when he did it. He was completely naive of the potential consequences. To me that is sad. Is it enough to banish him? Probably not. However, when you continue to make contradictory comments over and over again depending on who you are taking to and what you aim to get out of the conversation, that is just sneaky and an insult to people’s intelligence. I can’t respect someone like that.

Is it just me or does there seem to be a lot of sympathy for Steve from the “talking heads”? The summary from this conference is not very revealing, but the tone of much of what I’ve read before is critical of JKR. It seems a lot of people have reduced this to a David vs. Goliath battle. That makes it all very simple, doesn’t it? Not many of us would support Goliath, at least not publicly.

When this case started, I thought it would be a slam dunk for JKR. Very naive on my part. I’m very dismayed.

@mollwobble

I agree with you, it is totally ok to write a book and make money from it. I don’t think it even matters if it is a good one, the book stores are full of poorly written books. Just make it your own version. With less plagiarisim, more original, verified content the Lexicon could have been a good book, with people anxious to get it. The rush to get it to market quickly after DH was the “flaw in the plan”.

And that is really what all this is about. Just putting information in a website for others to share it is one thing but almost copying the work of an author[any author ]almost word-for-word and trying to publish it as your own is a whole other kettle of fish.One is just sharing your love and knowlegdge of said work with others who also love it ,and the other is taking from that author and isn’t something any REAL fan would do.

Of course the publishing company ,for the published Lexican book,could care less ,all they want is to make monies ,they have NO LOVE for the author or really for her work.And SVA is a smart man and should have looked before he leaped.

I do not think Wu understands the fan response to Steve at all.

We are not afraid of our own selves, rather feel betrayed by somebody who has represented our fandom for years.

I hate how the media is trying to paint this as a “David and Goliath” case. Steve is a grown man. He is not some naive child.

KB Perez ,you were right,it should have been a slam dunk ,for it to turn into SVA favor and ultimate win [I sure hope NOT] is like saying go get any book you want re-copy 90 % of it word-for -word and put you name on it and publish it, with your name on it.That is just wrong no matter how you look at it.

This is NOT a David and Golieth issue,the press just are too uninventive and lazy to really think of what it isand could care less ,also.And the paralel is an extreme insult to JKR.

Also,

@ Mollywobble and Cathy… you both pretty much nailed it.

Though I did not agree with Steve, I remained sympathetic toward him… until recently. Those harsh words directed at Melissa were terrible.

You know what I’m finding amusing about all this?

It’s not enough that this community reads up on the case (I’ll give y’all that – you give as much attention to this case as you do any of the canon materials), comes down on Jo’s side and still has a fair share of people who don’t want to admit there are gray areas in intellectual property law. As an earlier poster on this thread put it, it’s about loyalty and appreciation, so you are coming down on JKR’s side, no matter what.

But now you’re arguing/complaining about whether or not you have actually “disowned” SVA? And, again, whether or not “Pottercast” is an “official” Potter podcast?

The semantic justifications here are starting to drive me insane. You’re almost as bad as the lawyers! Perhaps you need to pull back from your over-analysis, and take things in the spirit they are intended, instead of parsing every sentence for meaning. This case is not an episode of “Lost” where every casual phrase has meaning. Sometimes a word is just a word, properly or improperly chosen.

Mr. Wu may not be a HP expert, but his professional focus is on copyright law and how it applies to telecommunication (i.e. – the Internet). The fact that the HPL started on the Internet, that JKR was fine with the HPL as an internet site but not a book, saying it now infringes on her intellectual property rights? He is actually somewhat qualified to discuss this case and the phenomenon surrounding it. If you don’t agree with him, that’s fine. But I assure you, the man has no need to “milk” this case for publicity – he’s got plenty of his own. He may not have the mega-fandom of JKR, but there are those of us within the Internet professional community who know his name well. And the fact is, if you’re going to have a conference on Copyright Law and the Internet at this moment, then you can’t have it without discussing this case.

I am pro intellectual property. Because JKR’s world – while lovely and complex – has plenty of references or ideas that exist in works previous hers. Mythology. Neil Gaiman’s stuff. C.S. Lewis. You can see their influences and many more in every word she writes. To give her one step towards the legal rights that it is all uniquely hers is a problem for any legitimate creative author who has been inspired by her, or, more importantly, the works she herself pulled from (whether consciously or subconsciously).

And the fact remains – the organization of the lexicon materials is actually SVA (and his team’s) intellectual property, because JKR has NOT done it herself. The logical organization and interpretation of data (because the timeline is definitively interpretive – she provides few concrete dates beyond Harry’s birthday and holidays – the rest must be inferred from the text), is something that JKR has not provided. Had she done so already and SVA tried to capitalize on that, definitely not kosher. But his works provide value to the HP community, because they do not exist in canon form at present.

It may not be originally creative, but it is a reference material of value, and therefore, SVA has some rights to the work he’s done. (Again – if he hasn’t referenced properly, I strongly feel he needs to do that and/or edit his entries. He should know better as a librarian than to not reference source material. As someone who works with data, I definitely don’t support that.)

Someone in a previous comment on another article said they wish there was a law that “allowed” the author “first shot” at writing materials like this. The thing is, they don’t NEED that law – they can publish that material alongside or as part of their own books, or even publish it on their own web sites if their publishers don’t want to spend the money to print the material. They have their own notes and definitions so they could easily put it all together – far more easily than an enthusiast who has to deal with the final, edited materials.

Again, not all fans retain an encyclopedic knowledge of the books, movies and supplement canon in their head. Some of us need a boost like a simple, non-interpretive reference material. So this case should not be allowed to kill the concept of enthusiast-written lexicons or reference guides for complex popular fiction, which is what many here are missing, I think. It is not just about this book – it’s about future books, HP related or otherwise. (A fact I’m almost positive that has appeared to kill Mugglenet’s Encyclopedia, whatever its title was…)

You’re too focused on “Poor Jo” (the billionaire author) to actually realize the case is precedent setting, despite any protests to the otherwise. I don’t know that any of you would care if someone tried to say, write a lexicon for the “Twilight” series or Stephen King’s “Dark Tower” series, but were blocked by doing so because of a potential legal precedent set in this case. Because it doesn’t affect you, and your comments do bear that out – you’re thinking in a very parochial and personal vein.

If JKR/WB wins outright, it clears the way for authors to not allow anyone to write supplement, non-canon books to their worlds. Or for publishers to be fearful to even pick up books that are similar in practice but may not have the potential “plagiarism” stigma due to definitively original writing and interpretation. Why should any publisher touch a work of this nature if they don’t want the wrath and legal bills of authors to rain down upon them?

For a community that thrives on fan-fiction and reveling in every theory and speculation in their universe, I find it surprising that would you deny that same joy to others who revel in other fictional universes and may be willing to buy a book off the shelves.

Think beyond yourselves, HP Fandom. There’s a larger world out there, and there are lots of other much beloved fiction series this is going to impact.

And stop playing word games…really. It makes any valid and solid arguments that come out of this forum (of which there are many), look invalid. If Pottercast or Mugglecast aren’t actually officially sanctioned by JKR and WB, they are as close as it gets, so take it as a compliment. And maybe some have never “owned” SVA, but he is an undeniable part of the broader HP fandom. The vilification he has received looks very much like the fandom has given him the boot, even he was not overly loved to begin with. If you can’t see that, then your objectivity really is in question.

My take on this is that SVA can no longer expect to see a market for his product. Why the publisher is continuing to push it is beyond me. After the fan support is gone, who will buy it. Now that it has been exposed, I for one am waiting for the JKR written version. I want to thank the entire staff of Leaky for this forum. Keep it up.

@ Cynthia

Tim Wu and the many others that have written on the lawsuit’s effect on HP fandom is not based on reality. The inflammatory headlines followed by nonsensical paragraphs about David & Goliath or if they know the books at all, Harry & Voldemort. ( I think at best these articles are “Skeeterisms”.) Some of the fans have been quite upset but I do believe a great number of them are young – these are, after all, books that are read by children and adults.

However, a huge portion of the fandom has examined every minute detail of the legal documents, media information provided, debated the details and had intelligent ideas and discussions about copyright issues. Young and old have participatted. It has been an enlightening, educating, sometimes enraging process. In my opinion this is a perfect example of how the Harry Potter series has joined the generations. To make it as simple as “fandom savaging and eating one of their own” is cheap, lazy and insulting.

Chasmosaur, I wholeheartedly agree. As literary scholar myself, I find the current situation a bit unnerving. I think that it is very interesting (and very telling), that, while I probobly generally disagree with you on the issue of intellectual property, we come to the same conclusion on this. I have always comedown on the side of allowing free use of ideas (barring fraud, etc.). I also am fearful of the effect of this suit on the field of bibliographic research in general. Thank you for the breath of fresh air.

@ Chasmosaur….

Thanks for your excellent comments. You put into words exactly what has been swimming around in my head as I’ve been reading the comments here.

omg not this guy again.

this is so confusin i dont know where its going, well when it is finally ova i will try and understand it but till tha time i will stay confused

@thefish -

I generally agree with you on the free use of ideas thing. I have admitted in previous posts on other articles I simply don’t know enough about the canon materials and how extensively SVA has used them to make an appropriate judgement.

If he’s over-used JKR’s published text and refuses to change it, then yes, he deserves to lose. If he hasn’t, then it’s a far murkier area where settlement and editing are called for. I definitely believe in authors retaining their rights (my aunt is a poet and author on a small scale), but this case is problematic from a precedent-setting aspect for any supplement works, whether they are lexicons or interpretive/expansion.