Pot, Kettle, and Black

Personally, I think it’s utterly ridiculous that JK Rowling has managed to block the publication by Steven Vander Ark of an unofficial Harry Potter encyclopaedia, based upon the website he created.

Rowling has even admitted in the past that she’s even used the original site created by the book’s author in order to keep track of her characters. When the information was free, that was fine – but now that he wants to make some money out of it, ooh, that’s not fair.

And let’s be honest, it’s not like Harry Potter is anywhere near an original character anyway – and nor are the books overly original. It’s just that they’ve been very profitable, and have allowed Rowling to make enough money to sue over stupid cases like this.

In my mind, there’s a market for reference books to complex multi-novel series, for example. I’m sure there are “Lord of the Rings Companions” (Although I can’t be arsed to look for them) alongside “Tolkien Companions”, and many others.

Of course, Shell Cottage wrote about this in a far better way than I can (and I remember reading that piece back when it was first written) so it’s best to go there for a far more cogent explanation of the entire farce…