As if yesterday’s thrilling installment of That Court Case Where JK Rowling Gets Upset Because Someone Else Wrote A Harry Potter Book wasn’t enthralling enough, there’s more.
That’s because yesterday JK Rowling made it into court to speak about her outrage that a third-party Harry Potter reference book, The Lexicon Of Harry Potter, was being published without her say-so. “We all know I’ve made enough money.
hat’s absolutely not why I’m here,” JK Rowling told the courtroom. And that sounds fair – quite often the mega-wealthy lose the thrill of making money and replace it with a new interest.
It’s rare for a court case about a reference book to make a lot of headlines – we can only really think of the time that Britney Spears wrote her 1,200-page tome The Unbearable Lightness Of Being: The Knickerless Perspective back in 2006 – but that was before anyone tried writing a Harry Potter reference book.
As you’re probably quite sick of hearing now, JK Rowling has launched a lawsuit against publisher RDR Books because of its intent to publish The Harry Potter Lexicon, a third-party Harry Potter encyclopedia that will directly compete with JK Rowling’s own forthcoming Harry Potter encyclopedia.
JK Rowling’s court case started yesterday in New York, and it opened with a bang – JK Rowling herself took to the stand herself to defend against accusations that she just didn’t want to see anyone else make money from Harry Potter. And, to be fair, JK Rowling looked all wet-eyed and Princess Dianaish. Reuters reports:
When asked what Potter meant to her, the mother-of-three said: “I really don’t want to cry, because I am British … It’s like asking how do you feel about your child.” “This is very personal to me,” said Rowling, who wrote the first Potter book as a poverty-stricken single mother and is now estimated by The Sunday Times to be worth about $1 billion. “I am an author — 17-years of my work is being exploited here. This is not about money.”
And this lawsuit hasn’t just affected JK Rowling’s plans for her Harry Potter encyclopedia – she also claims that the stress of the court case has ‘decimated’ her creativity and has postponed her big Harry Potter follow-up book.
In fact, JK Rowling says that the book might not ever see the light of day now, thanks to the accompanying mental anguish of what she’s going through now.
Look, we’re all thinking the same thing here – let’s all go away and write a knocked-off Harry Potter book each.
By the time JK Rowling’s done suing all of us then she won’t have it in her to ever write another book again. And that’ll be one less person’s stupendous success to be bitterly jealous about, right?
Read more: Rowling tells court she’s stopped working – Reuters
Final Boss of teh Interwebs says
lol you mean motherfucker
mst3kster says
I also fucked your mean mother.
JR says
I wonder how fast you woul be in court if someone came out with a blog called Cecklespray, filled with the same crappy, chiched writing tht’s found here
SilvorMoon says
You know what? You’re right! JKR should totally lose this case. As a matter of fact, I like the way you think so much that if she does lose, I’ll celebrate by going through everything you’ve ever written, copying all the bits I like out of it, and publishing it as a desk reference. I won’t use proper quotation marks or citations, of course, because I did all the reading so it’s all MY original scholarship. I won’t share the money I make with you, either. It’s going to be hard work going through all those words, and I would totally deserve the entire share of the profits! It’ll be okay, because you’re more famous than I am. Just because you put in the hard work and had all the talent doesn’t mean I don’t deserve to share in your glory.
Don’t you go stepping on my dreams, now.
Tomhas Brokafuck says
You’re not, funny, Shit Heritage. It’s Rowlings fucking work, she has the right to have control over her own creation. You’re lame and not funny and a fucking loser.
gir says
Actually, Tomhas, I think you will find that YOU are Shit. And YOU are lame and not funny and a fucking loser.
munch says
“I really don’t want to cry, because I am British …”
I understand not?
British cry never?
Rob Delaney says
Is it me, or is the number of H4t3rs increasing exponentially recently?
munch says
The H8RZ are also getting increasingly wittier.
I mean c’mon “Shit Heritage”?
You’ve got to admit that that’s GOLD.
Mithaearon says
But didn’t rowland just plagurised over fantasy authors in the first place?
Theres some sad mo fo’s in this world, Its harry potter, fiction (crap faction at that) get over it. That Vander Ark guy is in his 50’s. Potter is pootly written childrens fiction.
King Jimbo says
Jesus wept…
As has been stated above, Rowling is widely considered to have ripped off the fantasy genre in general with her poorly written books. And besides, doesn’t this sort of thing happen a lot? How many “un-official” related books are there out there about various brands? Instead of booing about it she should re-double her efforts to come out with a cracking “official” lexicon, or whatever. If her “creativity” has been “decimated” by a court case she has brought about then well, that’s pathetic. Stop booing and get back to work, if this is so important to you. I have sympathy for anybody that has their work “ripped off” but this is what happens. I have no sympathy for how she has dealt with it.
I can’t believe I’ve written this much of a comment about bloody spawn of Potter Rowling. Urgh.
Mithaearon says
Her names rowling? No wonder she looked at me funny when I called her JR Rowland
Gilbert Wham says
If here creativity has indeed merely been ‘decimated’, that means she still has ninety percent of it left, yes? You would think a wordsmith of such reknown would phrase things a little more accurately hmmmm?
Furthermore, Tomhas, my dear fellow, it is totally acceptable, and indeed very common, for people to produce critical and/or reference works for pieces of fiction (yes, even shit fiction) who are not the authors of said works. You can get PHDs doing it and everything.
Ramiro says
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/decimate
check definition 3.
I agree with you on the topic of producing referencing material for fiction. This isn’t by any means uncommon even for crap like Naruto.
Also, if you want real fiction you should check out H.P. Lovecrafts works, I don’t care of Neil Gaiman thinks his writing is amateurish I think it’s brilliant XD