Harry Potter Lexicon website disappears as JK Rowling wins court battle

Davey Winder
Tuesday, 09 September 2008 04:15

Business IT - Networking

A US Judge has handed victory to JK Rowling in her legal battle to prevent publication of a Harry Potter encyclopedia, but there are only losers as the Harry Potter Lexicon website goes down...

JK Rowling has enjoyed tremendous success. Hersw is a real rags to riches story as within the space of a few short years she went from struggling single mother and hopeful novelist to one of the most succesful authors of modern times.

From living a hand to mouth existance, Rowling has ammassed a well deserved half billion pound fortune on the back of the Harry Potter books and movies.

Harry Potter is that rare thing: more than just a book, this is a cultural phenomenom around the world. People live and breath Potter, it means everything to them.

Some spend much of their time building up reference resources. People like Steven Vande3r Ark who has established one of the most popular and complete online references at his Harry Potter Lexicon website.

In fact, Rowling herself liked the Lexicon so much in the past that she had actually praised both it and its author. That was before he decided to turn it into a proper, printed, Harry Potter Encylopedia of course.

Then Rowling, and Warner Bros, took legal action to block the publication and sued the US publisher RDR books claiming that if it went ahead the publication would cause her irreparable harm as an author.

She said she had planned to write her own lexicon, she said she had hoped to donate the proceeds to charity, she said she had to fight to "uphold the right of authors everywhere."

Apparently there is a big difference between fans publishing information online for free and selling it as a book. So perhaps this has more to do with money that anything else? Indeed, during her evidence to the court she called it 'wholesale theft.'

It's all about the money, the marketing, the movies and the merchandise stoopid. And what has happened to the Harry Potter Lexicon website? More on page 2...

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