Chris pointed me to a rather scathing discussion by Orson Scott Card regarding J.K. Rowling’s “stupid, self-serving claim“.
First of all, I have to applaud the dexterity with which “Uncle Orson” burns J.K. Rowling — it’s really quite something to read.
But really, I’ve thought about it, and whereas I tend to agree with the people who think that she’s being greedy and nasty — she might actually have a point in suing Steven Vandar Ark (SVA) for his attempt to publish the Lexicon for profit.
I’ve briefly (!) browsed through the Lexicon, and most of it seems to function as a cross-referencing dictionary with most of the definitions being lifted directly from the Harry Potter books. I’ve also read briefly on commentary on fair use laws, and to be honest, it’s all rather murky.
SVA has never claimed ownership of the Harry Potter world or anything within it. This combined with that he has made a rather handy tool that even J.K.R has admitted to using when she was unable to recall a fact from the HP books off the top of her head — potentially puts this under the realm of being legal.
On the other hand, I think that most of what makes his site a valuable one, are the numerous essays regarding the Harry Potter world. This is then problematic — because the majority of them were fan-submitted and as such, he has no right to reproduce them for his profit unless the owners have all signed their rights over to him.
Someone said in the commentary that it isn’t so much “is this legal” as “should this be legal”.
I’d argue that if SVA only wanted to publish the Lexicon as something rather like a glorified dictionary, it rather stokes my ire. Sure, he spent a lot of time on it — but in the end he’s not really contributing that much extra to it. It’d be a lot more agreeable to me if he simply chose to maximize his profits by putting up more cafepress items and perhaps a donation button.
On the other hand — I think it’s rather small of J.K.R to be suing him. I really do think that she’s only doing this because she wants to produce a lexicon of her own, as she’s admitted to such, and she doesn’t want the competition.
Frankly, if she were to publish an encyclopedia of her own with more insights into how she created the Harry Potter world and why certain people/things/events happened/evolved the way they did — then it would be something that any Harry Potter fan would choose over something that a fan compiled that really has no additional value other than convenience. Which, also frankly, is most useful to me in its web format with all the hyperlinks and the ability to use “ctrl+F” on it.
In conclusion, I really think she probably does have a leg to stand on in terms of suing SVA, but she really shouldn’t have, in terms of costing herself public opinion.
Especially since she seems rather given to dramatizing just a trifle.
“I’m not at all convinced that I would have the will or the heart to continue with my encyclopedia,1” says she, further going on to say that “It’s really decimated my creative work over the last month,” and “Again, it’s very hard to describe to someone who’s not engaged in creative writing, but you lose the threads, you worry if you will be able to pick them up again in exactly the same way.”
I think that she’s right — it’s very hard to pick up writing again when you’ve been feeling icky — but I just feel snarky towards her saying things in that “woe is me” manner. It just reminds me of the prissy little goody two shoes who runs home crying because she got mud on her dress. Or maybe I’m just envious of how much money she has and am therefore much more snarky towards her than I would otherwise.
What do you think? Do you support her in this?
1. Lifted from FoxNews.com, retrieved 5/2/2008
