Once upon a time in fandom there was a librarian from, I think, the midwest of America who became enchanted with the Harry Potter novels. His name was Steve Vander Ark.
Being a librarian, and therefore professionally versed in the organisation and presentation of information, he started compiling The Harry Potter Lexicon - in my view one of the most amazing fansites ever to hit the Potterverse.
It was an exhaustive attempt to analyse and understand all the miscellaneous and not-so-miscellaneous bits of information in the books - from characters and spells to teachers, the layout of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, the rules of Quidditch and pupils and former pupils in each of the four houses.
It was a fascinating read in its own right and the definitive source of information for people trying to refresh their memories on important points, compile their own weird and wonderful theories, write fanfiction or just understand the books better. And Mr Vander Ark became a popular figure within Harry Potter fandom, being asked to speak at conventions and suchlike.
And then (like so much else in Harry Potter fandom, not to say Harry Potter canon) it all went horribly, hideously wrong.
After the publication of the seventh novel he signed up with a small publisher and announced his intention to bring out the Lexicon in book form. Warner Bros and JK Rowling took exception to this and issued a writ, on the basis that she wanted to produce an encyclopaedia of her own and this would interfere with it.
Thanks in no small part to some disastrous online interventions from the publisher in question, Steve Vander Ark didn’t get a lot of support from fandom. He was widely accused of getting what he damn well deserved (or maybe I was just seeing a particularly unpleasant strand of reaction). I think he was actually viewed as committing the cardinal sin of trying to profit from his and others’ fannish activity.
It’s been a long time since I had anything whatsoever to do with Harry Potter fandom - universally acknowledged these days as a magnet for some of the most peculiar and unpleasant people on the Internet, and that really is saying something. And I absolutely am not interested in arguing the toss about this issue.
But my personal opinion, for what little that is worth in this Internet age, is that the vast amount of original research and critical analysis that went into compiling the Lexicon made it a work in its own right and not just a derivative one. And that, if Rowling won, the precedent set would be horrible.
And I also think she can probably hold her own in the encyclopaedia-selling stakes. Your opinion, naturally, may differ. Wouldn’t life be boring if we all thought the same things?
I am also grateful to Steve Vander Ark and his team for the hours of enjoyment that I had browsing the Lexicon in those long, barren periods between new books - at the point when I cared about filling those long, barren periods between new books.
(Full disclosure moment: my enjoyment of the entire series which had been slowly draining away ever since the publication of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire finally dried up completely after a single reading of Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince and I have never even felt the urge to pick up the final one to see what happened.)
I was, however, still very interested to read this article in Slate for the issues it raises about the extent of authorial power and influence:
J.K. Rowling’s Dark Mark: why she should lose her copyright lawsuit against the Harry Potter Lexicon
Rowling is overstepping her bounds. She has confused the adaptations of a work, which she does own, with discussion of her work, which she doesn’t. Rowling owns both the original works themselves and any effort to adapt her book or characters to other media—films, computer games, and so on. Textually, the law gives her sway over any form in which her work may be “recast, transformed, or adapted.” But she does not own discussion of her work—book reviews, literary criticism, or the fan guides that she’s suing. The law has never allowed authors to exercise that much control over public discussion of their creations.
Unlike a Potter film or computer game, the authors of the Lexicon encyclopedia are not simply moving Potter to another medium. Their purpose, rather, is providing a reference guide with description and discussion, rather like a very long and detailed book review. Such guides have been around forever—centuries if you count the Bible, and more recently for complex works like the writings of Jorge Borges or The Lord of the Rings. As long as a guide does not copy the original work verbatim, it falls outside the category of “adaptation.” And that’s why it is largely unnecessary to discuss the more complex copyright doctrine of “fair use.” Rowling’s rights over the guide don’t exist to begin with, so we don’t need to go there.
This can be made clear by looking at a typical Lexicon entry, like this one for the “house elf,” the character who does the scut work in the Potter universe. “House-elves,” says the encyclopedia, “are small humanoid creatures who inhabit large houses belonging to wealthy Wizarding families.” For a fan to write this kind of entry, Rowling says, is to “take the author’s hard work, re-organize their characters and plots, and sell them for their own commercial gain.” But that’s ridiculous. This and other entries aren’t, as Rowling seems to suggest, anything like an abridgment of the originals. No one would read the Lexicon as a substitute for the Potter books; it is useless unless you’ve read the original, and that makes all the difference. Read full article here…