J.K. Rowling Feels Betrayed By Fan

Posted on March 1, 2008

J.K. Rowling speaks out about the lawsuit she has filed to stop the publication of a fan's Harry Potter Lexicon which will interfere with one the author herself will publish. She says in a lawsuit that she feels betrayed by fan Steven Vander Ark for trying to publish an unauthorized reference work called the Harry Potter Lexicon.

Rowling said she was especially irked that the site's owner and the lexicon's would-be publisher, RDR Books, continued to insist that her acceptance of free, fan-based Web sites justified the efforts. "I am deeply troubled by the portrayal of my efforts to protect and preserve the copyrights I have been granted in the Harry Potter books," she wrote in court papers filed Wednesday in a lawsuit she brought against the small Muskegon, Mich., publisher.

She said she intends to publish her own definitive Harry Potter encyclopedia.

"If RDR's position is accepted, it will undoubtedly have a significant, negative impact on the freedoms enjoyed by genuine fans on the Internet," she said. "Authors everywhere will be forced to protect their creations much more rigorously, which could mean denying well-meaning fans permission to pursue legitimate creative activities."

She added: "I find it devastating to contemplate the possibility of such a severe alteration of author-fan relations."

J.K. Rowling is known for being really nice to her fans and her fan sites. For one of those greedy fans to take her hard work and try to profit off it isn't right. We hope she wins her lawsuit. If she loses, look for authors to immediately take action to shut down fan sites to avoid this very problem in the future, which would be a shame.

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