Last week I mentioned how smart J.K. Rowling was for not signing the rights to her Harry Potter franchise away. By not signing her rights away she has become one of the most famous rags to riches success stories to date. Ms. Rowling went from living in her car with her children to being the most successful children’s literary authors in the world. The billionaire author is a role model for new writers everywhere and a household name for millions of families.

Like most celebrities, she too has a fan site owned and operated by her biggest fan. However, this fan site is a bit different. Steven Vander Ark is the creator of the world famous, and widely used, Harry Potter Lexicon website. This website is a supplemental encyclopedia of sorts to compliment all of the Harry Potter books. Ms. Rowling embarrassingly admitted that she too has visited the Harry Potter Lexicon website herself while penning her sequels. "This is such a great site that I have been known to sneak into an Internet cafe while out writing and check a fact rather than go into a bookshop and buy a copy of Harry Potter (which is embarrassing)…” (Hostin, 2008)

Unfortunately for Mr. Vander Ark, a mere muggle librarian, this picture perfect situation went sour once he decided to publish a bound version of the Lexicon. “Under the marketing plan, the [Lexicon] publisher was initially to print 10,000 copies selling for $24.95, beginning last November.” (Hostin, 2008). Ms. Rowling went from fan and supporter to Plaintiff faster than you can say Wingardium Leviosa.

Ms. Rowling says that by allowing this book to be published that it will open up opportunities for others to profit from another author’s hard work. In this respect, I agree with Ms. Rowling wholeheartedly. However, the Lexicon is not an exact copy of Ms. Rowling’s work; rather it is a compilation of spells and wizardry facts and tidbits that is really needed to fully comprehend the books. In my opinion this is no different than Cliff’s Notes making summaries and commentary about famous books, both copyrighted and in the public domain.

A professor of Media Law at Seton Hall University thinks she has a case. Paul Callan said, “I think it’s a radically different situation than a free [website] that is just there to help fans. This is a crass attempt to make money off of the creativity of a very successful author.” Again, I disagree with Mr. Callan’s analysis. Mr. Vander Ark is an avid fan of the Harry Potter series and he first began this project to assist himself while reading the books. After numerous friends asked the same questions about the Harry Potter books Mr. Vander Ark decided to publish the information to the web. It was initially a Harry Potter FAQ’s type of a website. As the website grew in massive proportions, from sheer amount of content to extensive bandwidth from fans, Mr. Vander Ark realized he needed help financially to keep it open. Asking for donations was an option he sought; however since 80-90% of the website traffic were children the donations would be minimal. His next option was to offer advertisements on his site. Advertisements work wonderfully well so long as the ads get click-threws.

Now, I don’t know about you but I very seldom click on advertisements I see on a website. In reality, a lot of people fear receiving viruses, malware and pop-ups from ads so it is safe to say that the click-threws are few and far between.

Mr. Vander Ark finally thought of a way to help him afford the bandwidth and also reach Harry Potter fans that have little to no Internet access. He decided to take his already compiled Lexicon and publish it as a book for sell at a relatively nominal price.

Problem solved!

Wait… maybe not…

Ms. Rowling was fine with him putting hundreds and thousands of hours into the website for free… a website that assisted her with her own profitable novels. Yet, the moment he tries to keep the website free by charging for a printed version she throws a hissy fit! I can almost guarantee that the money he would have made off the sale of the book would never make it to his pocket as cold hard cash. As someone who has hosted many websites with unbelievably huge amounts of traffic can attest to, paying for the bandwidth to support these visit surges cost significantly more than the $25 price for the book.

The icing on the cake, in my humble opinion, is that Ms. Rowling decided that *she* would write and produce *her own* Harry Potter companion guide. Ms. Rowling saw the potential success that Mr. Vander Ark’s idea had that she decided she wanted in on that action. Most companion type supplements are not written by the author of the original publications themselves… other knowledgeable people typically pen this type of book. Basically, Ms. Rowling is stealing Mr. Vander Ark’s idea.

Also, in an interview with Ms. Rowling I once watched she stated that she got her spells and such from real Wiccan spell books. Now, if that’s true, how come she is not crediting the original author of these spells in her famous Harry Potter series? She stated that she used these spells practically as is since she was uneducated in the area of Wicca and witchcraft. Wouldn’t that be copyright infringement? Hmm… a nice imponderable indeed.

As Tim Wu, a law professor from Columbia University states, Mr. Vander Ark, and other fans who own fan websites, is an author and deserves copyright protection and respect just as Ms. Rowling. “These may not be authors like Rowling, who are going to become millionaires. But I think, however humble, they are they deserve a little respect, and that’s where I think the law needs to go.” (Hostin, 2008)

Citation
Hostin, Sunny. (2008) Harry Potter Case Brings the Law into Internet Age. Retrieved from CNN.com website on November 11, 2008 at
http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/04/22/sunny.potter/index.html