Some Knowledge

I’ve been following this story all afternoon.  J. K. Rowling was in a Manhattan court today testifying about the damage that the publication of Steven Vander Ark’s book “The Harry Potter Lexicon.” will do to her own works.  There is the whole question of copyright infringement and plagiarism and all the damage this book will do to the reputation of the author.

I can see the point of not wanting a big encyclopedia published of all the things that happen in her books.  I can see that this author has totally based his work on the imagination of Rowling.  Still, a person has the right to write their own book, even if it is nothing but quotes from another author, right?  I’m not sure.  There’s a whole huge website that is the basis for the lexicon.  Why didn’t she object to that?  Isn’t it copyright infringement to publish somebody else’s work on the Internet?

I think the whole point of this lawsuit has to be money.  Rowling must think that sales of the lexicon will cut into sales of her book.  Why bother to read a whole series of books if you can read one long condensed version of everything that happens and fill in the blanks?  It’s sort of like the Reader’s Digest of Harry Potter.

I’ve never read any of these books myself.  They do not appeal to me.  I saw one of the movies and fell asleep in it.  I fled in terror from the lexicon website.  Who would want to know all these nitpicky little things about somebody’s fantasy creation?  My only interest in this story is that it is about copyright infringement, which affects anybody who writes anything.  I think the bottom line here is that J. K. Rowling must think sales of the lexicon will hurt her own future sales of her books.  This is a perfectly legitimate concern.   I can’t understand the motivation for anybody who would go to all the trouble to analyze such a large volume of work at such a detailed level.  It will be interesting to see the outcome of this trial.