Harry Potter Lexicon is legal

‘Harry Potter’ is one of the best selling novels in the market which is used to produced the blockbuster movies, and thus, like every other successful novel, television series and so on such as Roswell and Star Trek, the fan fiction ‘Harry Potter Lexicon’ is created using a website.

Title : 'Harry Potter Lexicon' webpage
Source: Harry Potter Lexicon
Title : 'Harry Potter Lexicon' webpage
Source: Harry Potter Lexicon

However, in 2007, J.K. Rowling (the original writer of ‘Harry Potter’) was unhappy and sued a small publisher in Michigan over its plans to publish a book version of the popular website dedicating to the boy wizard (msnbc.com 2007). In that article, it is mention that J.K. Rowling was originally supporting the fan-driven efforts and has singled out the ‘Harry Potter Lexicon’ website. Conversely, she was not supportive when the ‘Harry Potter Lexicon’ was being published as a book. She then claimed that the book version of the ‘Harry Potter Lexicon’ will then improperly interfere with her plans to write her own definitive ‘Harry Potter’ encyclopedia which is included in the new materials, but not in the novels.

Referring to Wu (2008), fan guides are actually not illegal as for there is an essential and healthy line among what the original author owns and what the secondary authors get to do. In this case, ‘Harry Potter Lexicon’ is more into a discussion of the J.K. Rowling’s work where Lexicon is writing the story based on the understandings and opinions about J.K. Rowling’s work. Therefore, J.K. Rowling should lose her copyright lawsuit against Lexicon as for there is no law that allows the authors to have that much control over the public discussion of their creations (Wu 2008).

Besides that, according to Mundim (2006, pp. 233-234), the fan fiction is an evidence of the power of the reader to express different meanings from what is being presented. In a simple sentence, it means that fan fiction is the evidence of the power of the reader to make public his or her interpretation of a favoured text. Therefore, ‘Harry Potter Lexicon' is just an idea or interpretation of a reader of the original ‘Harry Potter’ novel and is not consider as stealing or copying the idea of J.K. Rowling. Hence, J.K. Rowling has no right to sue Lexicon based on that reason.

References

‘J.K. Rowling sues to stop Harry Potter Lexicon’ 2007, msnbc.com, viewed on 5th June 2008 at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21568449/.

Mundim, I.S. 2006, ‘Roswell, textual gaps and fans' subversive response’, UFMG, pp. 229-245, viewed on 5th June 2008 at http://www.cadernos.ufsc.br/online/cadernos7/isabella%20mundim.pdf.

Wu, T. 2008, ‘J.K. Rowling’s Dark Mark: Why she should lose her copyright lawsuit against the Harry Potter Lexicon’, Slate, viewed on 5th June 2008 at http://www.slate.com/id/2181776/#.