Anyone else hate J. K. Rowling?

[chadbang]

The greed of this woman never fails to amaze me.

She just won a legal battle shutting down the publican of the Harry Potter Lexicon, based on a fan site devoted to the books.

Why couldn't she just strike a deal with the author? She's such a control freak and money grubber. And this from a woman describe at wiki as having "£560 million ($1.1 billion), ranking her as the twelfth richest woman in Britain." Apparently she was so 'distressed' in court she was on the verge "of tears" describing; "she had stopped work on a new novel. "It's really decimated my creative work over the last month," she said during the trial in April. If the lexicon is published, she went on, "I firmly believe that carte blanche will be given to anyone who wants to make a quick bit of money, to divert some Harry Potter profits into their own pockets."

Please, lady. Loosen up the purse strings, already. She reminds me of those troll working in the bank in her books. She had already seen and praised the website this year as a project created by a devoted fan. I guess she couldn't get the total control she probably wanted over the book (and cash).

I can't stand J K Rowling.

 

[grawk]

It's the nature of the world. If you don't protect your rights, you lose them. She's protecting hers. More power to her.

 

[foo_me]

IMO, it's black and white and not greed.

It's her work, she should be able to do whatever she wants. For those who enjoyed it, it's b/c she created that world and it should be respected.
We might think it's harmless, but it doesn't matter...it's hers.
If I created something, i'd protect it too and be pissed off if someone tried to do something w/o my permission.

Regardless of anything, the law is the law and if the court ruled in her favor after hearing all the evidence, then i'd assume they'd know alot of more info and would have put more careful thought into it than anyone else.

 

[TheMarchingMule]

No doubt she's getting more protective and arguably greedy over her Harry Potter franchise.

On topic of her books, I liked them up until the last one. The story structure in the last book just absolutely proved that she just wanted to get the series over with. "Oh no, we're stuck with what to do next. Let's squabble some more until some miracle happens a few pages later!"

Also, the HP movies are pretty much done for. Nobody is interested in them that much any more, the cast is getting older really quickly, and teenagers with bad tastes in books have already turned to crap like Eragon and Twilight to tide their fantasies over now.

 

[Sherwood]

She owns it wholly. It belongs to her.

I would be rather upset if some stranger wanted to drive my car a few days a year. Just because I get it the rest of the days doesn't mean I should "loosen up the purse strings" and let other people drive it, too.

 

[Sherwood]

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheMarchingMule /img/forum/go_quote.gif crap like Eragon

QFT. Did you hear the trilogy is going to be, like, 8 books now?

 

[TheMarchingMule]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sherwood /img/forum/go_quote.gif QFT. Did you hear the trilogy is going to be, like, 8 books now?

Great, so three books of rip-off Lord of the Rings, and then 5 books of rip-off Harry Potter.

 

[jonathanjong]

Doesn't seem like she's done anything wrong, as such. Sure, she could've been more generous, more open-source. But that's true for all of us. The difference is, it seems, that she's rich so we expect her to be more generous than the rest of us. Is this fair? *shrug*

 

[AudioPhewl]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sherwood /img/forum/go_quote.gif She owns it wholly. It belongs to her. I would be rather upset if some stranger wanted to drive my car a few days a year. Just because I get it the rest of the days doesn't mean I should "loosen up the purse strings" and let other people drive it, too.

I can't really comment much, as I've never read one of the books or watched one of the films. But IMO your analogy is wrong.

How about you produce the car, then someone else comes along and prints a book detailing all the little tips and tricks of how to get the most from your car.

Just because the firm that created the car didn't want to produce such a book, it shouldn't mean(IMO) that someone else can't come along, do their own legwork about learning the "in's and out's" of the car, and print off their findings...

Or, am I missing something here?

~Phewl.

 

[PiccoloNamek]

How horrible. My respect for her has dropped a little. It is only an encyclopedia, a reference. I don't see how it would drastically cut into her profits or be harmful in any way. I have plenty of unofficial reference books for things like Star Trek, The X-Files, etc, and nobody made a stink when they came out, how should this be any different.

 

[Sherwood]

Quote:

Originally Posted by AudioPhewl /img/forum/go_quote.gif How about you produce the car, then someone else comes along and prints a book detailing all the little tips and tricks of how to get the most from your car. Just because the firm that created the car didn't want to produce such a book, it shouldn't mean(IMO) that someone else can't come along, do their own legwork about learning the "in's and out's" of the car, and print off their findings...

The reason she won the suit was because the judge agreed that her intellectual property rights were being violated.

The analogy has some holes, perhaps, so I won't pursue it. She owns the entire pantheon of Harry Potter, and her long-term commercial interests in the product might be infringed upon by kitchen table efforts.

I've read every book, and enjoyed them a great deal, but that's not necessary to understanding the argument here. Harry Potter, as beloved as it is, is not open to public amendment.

It is ridiculous to me that anyone would take Umbrage (see what I did there?) at Ms. Rowling for protecting her legal rights.

 

[TheMarchingMule]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sherwood /img/forum/go_quote.gif It is ridiculous to me that anyone would take Umbrage (see what I did there?) at Ms. Rowling for protecting her legal rights.

That sentence, good sir, is made of win.

 

[chadbang]

I guess this thread pretty much covers (in both directions) my feelings about Rowling. JK Rowling sues to stop Potter reference book from being published - Boing Boing

When does a reference books cease to be a reference book, is the main question. And in regards to it "detracting" from her so tightly-protected empire, as one person writes:


"The franchise has been exploited commercially in every way possible, many times with official products of questionable quality, so unless there are gross mistakes, fanfic or wild speculation in the reference, this is plain money grabbing, sorry."

 

[Duggeh]

I couldn't care either way, like the LOTR trilogy, the Harry Potter books are bloated overwritten prose cancer with a greatly inflated sense of self importance after the first say, 250 pages.

The film adaptations of both series are far moe enjoyable than the books. I love the Two Towers film and the Goblet of Fire film.

Let her (or her lawyers) be as constrictive in their control of the intellectual property rights as they want. In the end (year s from now) they'll wish they had opened the platform a little with some diplomacy, so that they'd have a bigger slice of a bigger pie, instead of the biggest slice of a pie that never grew much more.

 

[Arainach]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sherwood /img/forum/go_quote.gif She owns the entire pantheon of Harry Potter, and her long-term commercial interests in the product might be infringed upon by kitchen table efforts.

Except that freedom for fair use and parody are essential to copyright law. Copyright is supposed to encourage the creation of artistic works, not suppress them.