She's made a lot of money off Harry, and god bless her for it. The books are great.

But she cannot stop this book. It would be totally unfair, and wrong. She does not own the character, just the words she wrote.

Actually she does own the character, doesn't she? I would assume so, since HP is her creative property.

At the same time though I cannot see how a reference guide to her works, even in bookform, would be theft. It sounds more like it would be a helpful source for scholarly and educational research. This guy is not claiming that he created the characters, allusions, etc, but rather that he is trying to put them in an organized, easily accessible fashion.

It bothers me that Rowling is so bothered by this.

...Rowling wants to steal all of his academic and orgnizational work and put it into her own book for sale. You can never have enough hundreds of millions in your bank account.

There are many fanatics on the internet. Some of them love Clinton, some of them love Obama, some of them love Mac products, some of them love Harry Potter. Any article on any of the above topics, no matter how approached, tends to get a rise out of people.

I'm not sure what the correct answer is, here. Was the online version of the lexicon ad-free? If not, wasn't someone always profiting from it - and why didn't she care about it then?

I also have trouble seeing how the lexicon will hurt her in any way. I can envision two types of people who would buy it: hard-core fans, deeply immersed in the world and the franchise, who would definitely ALSO buy her Encyclopedia, and scholars who want a short-cut to write analysis/literary criticism, which would only help legitimatize her work.

Also, what's up with "unofficial" books? Unauthorized biographies, unofficial game strategy guides, unofficial fantasy-series world maps. I thought the basic idea was that the author/franchise was not contacted and did not necessarily consent to such a work, but the work was printed anyway - that's why it says "unofficial" on it. Can someone please explain the difference of this situation to me?

At the same time, it is just her work, reorganized. This guy didn't really add any original text, the way most comparable scholarly indices do (critical essays, etc.) - or they wait until the text in question has gone out of copyright. I'm sure a book of Milton quotes is fair game.

By the by, I find the way letter writers are always addressing article authors by their first names ("Hey, Farhad! Wise up!" "I don't know about that, Farhad") to be really strange and disrespectful. I don't think this is a generational thing; I'm in my early twenties.

Here's why I think Rowling is bothered by the other lexicon

1)She and her publishers are planning on coming out with their own lexicon so they can squeeze the last drops of money out of their property. They don't want competition.

2) Like a lot of creative types, she feels like she should be the definitive voice when it comes to interpreting her own work.

I personally don't think these books are going to last very long, anyway, so I can see why she wants to have her own lexicon out there. I hate to say it, but in my opionion, reading Harry Potter is like having a nice long wank before bed; kind of fun and naughty and exciting while your doing it, but ultimately it just puts you to sleep when your done.

How dare JK Rowling put forth her Harry Potter series as an original work of fiction? "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" indeed. One would think that she made up the idea of the Philosopher's Stone. She didn't. It's theft, I tell you! Plain and simple. How dare she?! All of those innocent children getting swindled out of their money for ideas that weren't even hers! And did you notice how they tried to change the title to "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone"? You're not fooling anyone JK Rowling.

I might enjoy reading free Harry Potter fan fiction but if one of those people starts charging for me for it that crosses the line. It’s not the fact that this person wrote the book that makes it bad – it’s that he’s charging for it.

And as much as I love JK I don’t think we can compare an encyclopedia of her work to a Ulysses companion. Ulysses is some complicated shit. I’d have had a hell of a time understanding that without a literary guide. But organizing JK’s text in alphabetical order, without adding any new insight, is just someone obsessing over the detail. Do I really need to know that exact spell to get it? And if JK wrote the spell who is this person to point it out and expect payment? I don’t think JK’s coming off as greedy at all. To me she comes off like someone protecting her work and I’d be doing the same thing.

I agree with Rowling 100% on this. Otherwise, what's to prevent me (and anyone else) from copying the information from the lexicon, and, with a nicer cover, printing my own definitive lexicon and making money off of the work that guy did?

I think the HP books are fabulous, and she's earned every penny of her billions.

The Harry Potter lexicon is not a scholarly analysis like the works Mr. Manjoo lists. An analysis uses quotes to illustrate or explicate an interpretation, it does not simply recapitulate the entirely of a work. The Lexicon is an index - a darned detailed index that makes one wonder about obsession. If Mr. Vander Ark had asked permission he might have gotten paid to compile such a thing. As it is, he presumed that by contributing his work to everyone he was adding value to the Harry Potter brand which belies the fair use concept.

On the other hand, Ms. Rowling and Scholastic did not, so far as anyone knows, take it upon themselves to create this item for their market. Trying to gain profit now is not just greed, it's absurd. Scholastic could have bought or offered some recompense to Mr. Vander Ark for all his work and gained something for everyone, but the mindset that allows for a winner takes all legal battle wreaks havoc with good sense.

An example of a more coherent and compassionate strategy is Philip Pullman's Dark Materials Trilogy, also published by Scholastic. The fan sites are not nearly so obsessive and Mr. Pullman and Scholastic work with fans to create useful links. Pullman's work is much more sophisticated and not easily indexed the way spells and characters can be for Rowling's books. Also, Pullman's heady work is open to interpretation rather than to lists thus making fair use an applicable term.