Results tagged “jkrowling”

J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros. have won their copyright infringement lawsuit against a web site operator who intended to publish an encyclopedia based on the author's multi-billion dollar fantasy franchise. Today a judge agreed with Rowling's argument that Steven Vander Ark's Harry Potter Lexicon would amount to "the wholesale theft of 17 years of my hard work." Vander Ark and his publisher had contended that the lexicon was a fair use allowable by law for reference books. But today's ruling found that it "appropriates too much of Rowling's creative work for its purposes as a reference guide." The judge also awarded Rowling and Warner Bros. $6,750 in statutory damages, which should finally permit the struggling author to enjoy a modest retirement.

While a judge deliberates on whether Harry Potter superfan Steve Vander Ark and his publisher violated copyright law by producing a lexicon based on J.K. Rowling’s hit novels, the 50-year-old librarian has simply been trying to keep it together. This week he told the New Yorker all about the trauma caused by the recent trial, during which he broke down in tears.

As the Harry Potter copyright infringement trial drew to a close yesterday, the judge urged the two parties to use their “imaginations” and agree to a settlement. Judge Robert Patterson professed a love of literature and invoked Charles Dickens’s Bleak House as cautionary tale, “A very sad story. Litigation isn’t always the best way to solve things."

The 50-year-old librarian on the receiving end of a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by the Harry Potter author was driven to tears yesterday while testifying in a Manhattan courtroom. Steven Jan Vander Ark (pictured), a former Star Trek fan from Michigan whose exhaustive website The Harry Potter Lexicon would be published in a print version by RDR Books, told lawyers that he was devastated by the lashing he’s received from J.K. Rowling and "the Harry Potter community... This has been an important part of my life for the last nine years or so.”

As detailed yesterday, the proposed book is essentially a print version of a Harry Potter fan site that Rowling previously awarded for excellence in web fandom (something she now “regrets bitterly”). But the website is free, and the billionaire author (along with Warner Brothers Entertainment) claims that a print version, if sold, would amount to “the wholesale theft of 17 years of my hard work.” Rowling went on to dismiss the book as “sloppy, lazy, dire and atrocious,” which is ironic because Rowling once confessed that she consulted the Lexicon website to check facts while writing the Potter series.

Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling is testifying in a Manhattan federal courtroom this morning against a small publisher trying to release an encyclopedia based on her work. In the past, Rowling has been supportive of the fan-based websites that explore her novels, but when RDR Books announced last fall that it would be publishing a book version of the The Harry Potter Lexicon website, Rowling filed a lawsuit claiming copyright infringement.

Earlier this afternoon, we watched Scholastic transform Mercer Street between Prince and Spring Streets in "Harry Potter Place" in anticipation of the 12:01AM release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - early reviews be damned! Not only was the Whomping Willow ready, there were owls (stuffed), messages on the Muggle Message Board, and a copy of the book signed by JK Rowling.

The clock is ticking and the new Harry Potter book will be released at 12:01am, less than twelve hours from now! The scene will surely be crazy and something that this city hasn't seen since...well, Wednesday when people lined up for a canvas grocery sack.

Okay, who went to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix at 12:01AM? Was it good? Is it better when you draw a lightning bolt on your forehead or wear a Hogwarts scarf? The movie has a 77% Freshness rating, as per Rotten Tomatoes (though it may go up or down as more reviews come in), and offers Harry Potters devotees another way to bide time until the final book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, is released on Saturday, July 21 at 12:01AM.

Reading is a necessary part of many airplane trips. And books haven't made the list of prohibited items - yet. But for some reason, airport security at one of the area airpots (probably JFK) gave Harry Potter author JK Rowling a hard time about her manuscript for the seventh book in the series. On her website, she writes:

The heightened security restriction on the airlines in August made the journey back from New York interesting, as I refused to be parted from the manuscript of book seven (a large part of it is handwritten, and there was no copy of anything I had done while in the U.S.). They let me take it on, thankfully, bound up in elastic bands.

Was her manuscript encased in some sort of protective gel exterior? That's pretty nice of the screeners, though we're sure a call to the British Consulate would have facilitated the situation, too, though, given the heft of Harry Potter books lately, we could understand the sight of a Harry Potter manuscript being threatening. Rowling had been in the NYC for a reading she did with Stephen King and John Irving, and she told fans she was toughening them up with two more character deaths to get them ready for King's and Irving's books.

Wow, Gothamist takes a break to re-read The Chronicle of Narnia and suddenly contemporary literature is rocked! The big stories: The Smoking Gun's expose on bestselling author James Frey's lie-laden memoir (and Oprah book), A Million Little Pieces, and the NY Times'investigation in JT Leroy, revealing he doesn't quite exist! Next, we'll find out JK Rowling is a marketing scheme cooked up by the British government! The Smoking Gun's article about Frey's lies seems so thorough that TSG will certainly be able to write the Cliff's Note for it. Sure, it's a compelling story, and sure, some writers embellish their memories...but embellishing whole parts? Wil this drive Frey fan Lindsay Lohan back to the brink? Now, all the 2003 blustering about people wanting to kick the crap out of Frey makes even more sense - remember Neal Pollack's issues with James Frey? And Jonathan Franzen must be looking pretty good to Oprah now.

Gothamist didn't realize this was last Sunday's episode, because we were buying various Thanksgiving treats for the upcoming holiday feast. Note: Crumbs on Amsterdam Avenue is awesome.

The BBC will be releasing a list of the top 100 books as chosen by the British public soon, so the Independent though they'd ask a few British notables what the worst books they've read are. Here are two interesting entries: