J.K. Rowling recently won the right to be even richer when a US federal judge ruled against a Harry Potter fan's right to publish The Harry Potter Lexicon. In so doing, Ms. Rowling demonstrated two things:
- No matter how "right" it may seem to use someone else's copyrighted works, you can't simply assume that right, and
- Just because you're copying out of love and devotion doesn't make it right.
I'm sure that the defendant in the Harry Potter decision, Steven Vander Ark, must have felt hard done by to see his paean to Rowling's genius stomped on by her. A wide range of Potter fans seem to share this view. As I'll describe below, this isn't wildly different from open-source "fans" who piggyback on the works of others.
But their misplaced feelings and his intentions are somewhat irrelevant here. He copied liberally from Rowling's work to create "his" lexicon, which is the primary problem, as Groklaw points out:
... Read moreAlways thought you had the right stuff to be a Harry Potter film star? Now's your chance.
Thanks to Microsoft and Warner Brothers, fans will have the chance to get their Gryffindor on and hang out with Emma Watson, Daniel Radcliffe, and crew:
Fans will have to complete an online quiz on Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix as part of the competition, arranged by Warner Home Video and Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions' UK division.
Those who answer all the questions correctly will get the chance to appear in the next film, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
The real question is which part Microsoft will be playing...Lord Voldemort, anyone? ;-)
I finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows at 3:30 PM on Saturday. It was incredible. Buy it now.
Btw, if Mike Olson doesn't agree with everything I say during our debate on Tuesday at OSCON, I will start giving away secrets at the rate of one per minute. :-)
It's that time of year again, and I'm saving up strength for the Harry Potter marathon that will begin shortly. Yes, I am a Harry Potter freak. My mom got me into the books several years ago - she forced me to listen to The Sorceror's Stone on a drive from Salt Lake City to Palo Alto during law school. That was all it took.
I've since read each of the books three times: once for personal enjoyment and once to Scout and Isaac. I'll be reading them again to Greta and Lily in a few years. But starting at 4:00 AM on Saturday, I will be reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows for 12 straight hours, or however long it takes. There will be no sharing of the experience with my children. They must fend for themselves in this nasty, brutish, and short first few days of the last Potter novel.
I have some precedent for reading binges. Back when I was an undergraduate student in London, I ran out of money two weeks before I was to fly home. To save money (and sanity), I read a Dickens novel each night, starting at 6:00 PM and reading nonstop until 6:00 AM. I finished a novel every night for 10 straight nights. I would sleep in until 2:00 or so, shower, eat "dinner," and then go back to reading.
I will not blog the secrets of the book, though I will be sorely tempted to drop hints to family members who prefer to sip rather than gorge themselves on the book. But let me just state my personal opinion, not having read any rumors or anything else about this last book: I believe Harry Potter is the last horcrux, and the only way Voldemort dies completely is with Harry's own death.
But that's just my guess. And now back to the regularly scheduled open source programming....
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