J.K. Rowling's Creative Dilemma
April 16, 2008
Do you think J.K. Rowling has gone too far or has she just been too nice? 
J.K. Rowling said Monday that her efforts to halt a publisher's "Harry Potter" lexicon have been crushing her creativity. Rowling said she has stopped work on a new novel because the lawsuit in federal court has "decimated my creative work over the last month." Rowling is suing RDR Books to stop publication of Steven Vander Ark's "Harry Potter Lexicon." She says her copyrights are being violated. "This book constitutes wholesale theft of 17 years of my hard work," she testified Monday. In court papers, Vander Ark, 50, said he was a teacher and school librarian in Byron Center, Mich., before recently moving to London to begin a career as a writer. He said he joined an adult online discussion group devoted to the "Harry Potter" books in 1999 before launching his own Web site as a hobby a year later. Since then, neither Rowling nor her publisher had ever complained about anything on it, he said. In May 2004, he said, Rowling mentioned his Web site on her own, writing, "This is such a great site that I have been known to sneak into an Internet cafe while out writing and check a fact rather than go into a bookshop and buy a copy of Harry Potter (which is embarrassing). A Web site for the dangerously obsessive; my natural home."
CLICK HERE to read more