You'd think this topic would be exhausted by now, however...
I just came across this interview with Steve Vander Ark, following RDR announcing its intention to appeal the court ruling made against them over the HP Lexicon book.
Well, you and Mr. Rapoport weren’t fully innocent, too. You assured that the lexicon wasn't a plagiarism of Ms. Rowling's books - meanwhile, it turned out that some parts were simply copied from the two companion books.
- There was very little actual word-for-word 'copying' from either the novels or the companion books. What did happen was that we used some very similar language. There were a few places where exact phrases did end up in the book without being in quotation marks and I didn't catch them. That was a mistake on my part in the editing process. As a matter of fact, the entries from „Quiddich Through Ages” and „Fantastic Beasts” contained only a little bit of the information from the companion books, and it wasn't copied word for word. Also, the introduction in the manuscript had a note sending readers back to those companion books to find out all the stuff we intentionally left out. What the judge was objecting to was not the text itself but the fact that by including those entries at all, even if not copied, we could take away from the sales of those books. The key point was that since some sections of the companion books are already in encyclopedia format, the judge was saying that those parts of the Lexicon book weren't 'transformative' because they presented them in the format which they were already in. That's really a more important criticism than copying.
When the lawsuit first came out, I supposed that the real crime was SVA putting out an encyclopedia for his own personal profit, whereas JKR was planning on creating one for charity. While I believe that may have factored into it, it turned out that the biggest issue was how similar the phrasing and choice of words in the Lexicon were to the actual Harry Potter books.
Now, I think I understand why the Lexicon website uses language and words that frequently match up with those in the HP books. I came into the Harry Potter by way of speculation and canon discussion. I found fellow nerds with whom I could nitpick minor details, dissect sentences and paragraphs from the books, and use what evidence I found to support whatever theory we had going that month.
In trying to be accurate (ie, making sure what you were saying conformed to what the text said), and given how absorbed everyone was in reading and analyzing the books, it was pretty normal for people to adopt phrases and choices of words that JK Rowling used in the books. And if you were trying to prove a particular point based on evidence from the books, those words and phrases were likely to only help you in your quest of fannish argument. Over the years, I have also noticed the odd fic that, probably unconsciously on the part of the author, contains wording close to what's found in the books. Again, this is probably due to fans trying to bring a kind of canon-oriented authenticity to their fannish work.
And I think it's probably the same case when it comes to the Lexicon website's content and why its language and wording is so close to that of Rowling's. SVA's style of writing found on the website likely grew out of the same pattern of fannish activity and communication. That's the smidgen of sympathy and understanding I have for the predicament that SVA found himself in with the book. That being said, I would assume, had I been in his place, that what's acceptable for something viewed as a harmless fannish endeavour is going to come under much harsher scrutiny when transformed into any other format or product.
Which leads me to...
You also said that the entries contained numerous references to other dictionaries and companions - still, the court proved there were only four ones. And many of your supporters in this case trusted your explanations. Don't you think that you and Mr. Rapoport kind of deceived the public?
- We used a lot of external sources, but we didn't credit each instance in the manuscript. It wasn't intended to be a scholarly work with endnotes for things like that. I do have a bibliography of the sources used and there are something like thirty individual resources on that list. The court only noted that we didn't cite those sources, not that we didn't use them at all. One of the more frustrating aspects of this whole thing is that the manuscript that went to the court was only partially edited. Because of the time constraints, we were editing at the same time as the British publisher was anglicising and that the French translator was translating. We were sending emails back and forth with suggestions, changes, edits, even complete sections added, etc. Those revisions and corrections were never included in the version of the manuscript sent to Rowling's people shortly after 31 October, which was the version that we ended up defending in court.
And here is where my smidgen of sympathy ends and the situation just boggles my mind. It sounds as though RDR was in such a rush to get this book published (presumably before all the HP hype died down), that they pretty much copied and pasted the content of the Lexicon, and quickly began formatting it for the book and sending it off to foreign publishers before they'd even finished editing it.
Now, I am not a publisher, and I have yet to work in publishing, but it seems to me one would want to be especially diligent when editing such a book, given the weight and power of the copyright owners/holders of the work that the Lexicon book theoretically discusses. Maybe it's just me, but when it comes to writing a book, shouldn't the Lexicon website have been more of an organization guide for SVA, rather than the actual content?
Again, I believe that the combination of the perceived need to publish ASAP and the expectation of a high payoff motivated them to rush forth without a) RDR checking the quality of the content on the Lexicon site and b) SVA rewriting and editing the Lexicon content before compiling it into book form and beginning the publishing process.
On top of that, RDR originally described the Lexicon book as a piece of scholarly, critical analysis of the HP books...and here we have SVA saying "It wasn't intended to be a scholarly work with endnotes for things like that." *headdesk* No, you just wanted to pass it off as such so as to get away with regurgitating someone else's work without any substantial effort made to infuse any kind of originality into it.
All in all, laziness and greed seem to be the biggest culprits in this case. =/
Well, you and Mr. Rapoport weren’t fully innocent, too. You assured that the lexicon wasn't a plagiarism of Ms. Rowling's books - meanwhile, it turned out that some parts were simply copied from the two companion books.
- There was very little actual word-for-word 'copying' from either the novels or the companion books. What did happen was that we used some very similar language. There were a few places where exact phrases did end up in the book without being in quotation marks and I didn't catch them. That was a mistake on my part in the editing process. As a matter of fact, the entries from „Quiddich Through Ages” and „Fantastic Beasts” contained only a little bit of the information from the companion books, and it wasn't copied word for word. Also, the introduction in the manuscript had a note sending readers back to those companion books to find out all the stuff we intentionally left out. What the judge was objecting to was not the text itself but the fact that by including those entries at all, even if not copied, we could take away from the sales of those books. The key point was that since some sections of the companion books are already in encyclopedia format, the judge was saying that those parts of the Lexicon book weren't 'transformative' because they presented them in the format which they were already in. That's really a more important criticism than copying.
When the lawsuit first came out, I supposed that the real crime was SVA putting out an encyclopedia for his own personal profit, whereas JKR was planning on creating one for charity. While I believe that may have factored into it, it turned out that the biggest issue was how similar the phrasing and choice of words in the Lexicon were to the actual Harry Potter books.
Now, I think I understand why the Lexicon website uses language and words that frequently match up with those in the HP books. I came into the Harry Potter by way of speculation and canon discussion. I found fellow nerds with whom I could nitpick minor details, dissect sentences and paragraphs from the books, and use what evidence I found to support whatever theory we had going that month.
In trying to be accurate (ie, making sure what you were saying conformed to what the text said), and given how absorbed everyone was in reading and analyzing the books, it was pretty normal for people to adopt phrases and choices of words that JK Rowling used in the books. And if you were trying to prove a particular point based on evidence from the books, those words and phrases were likely to only help you in your quest of fannish argument. Over the years, I have also noticed the odd fic that, probably unconsciously on the part of the author, contains wording close to what's found in the books. Again, this is probably due to fans trying to bring a kind of canon-oriented authenticity to their fannish work.
And I think it's probably the same case when it comes to the Lexicon website's content and why its language and wording is so close to that of Rowling's. SVA's style of writing found on the website likely grew out of the same pattern of fannish activity and communication. That's the smidgen of sympathy and understanding I have for the predicament that SVA found himself in with the book. That being said, I would assume, had I been in his place, that what's acceptable for something viewed as a harmless fannish endeavour is going to come under much harsher scrutiny when transformed into any other format or product.
Which leads me to...
You also said that the entries contained numerous references to other dictionaries and companions - still, the court proved there were only four ones. And many of your supporters in this case trusted your explanations. Don't you think that you and Mr. Rapoport kind of deceived the public?
- We used a lot of external sources, but we didn't credit each instance in the manuscript. It wasn't intended to be a scholarly work with endnotes for things like that. I do have a bibliography of the sources used and there are something like thirty individual resources on that list. The court only noted that we didn't cite those sources, not that we didn't use them at all. One of the more frustrating aspects of this whole thing is that the manuscript that went to the court was only partially edited. Because of the time constraints, we were editing at the same time as the British publisher was anglicising and that the French translator was translating. We were sending emails back and forth with suggestions, changes, edits, even complete sections added, etc. Those revisions and corrections were never included in the version of the manuscript sent to Rowling's people shortly after 31 October, which was the version that we ended up defending in court.
And here is where my smidgen of sympathy ends and the situation just boggles my mind. It sounds as though RDR was in such a rush to get this book published (presumably before all the HP hype died down), that they pretty much copied and pasted the content of the Lexicon, and quickly began formatting it for the book and sending it off to foreign publishers before they'd even finished editing it.
Now, I am not a publisher, and I have yet to work in publishing, but it seems to me one would want to be especially diligent when editing such a book, given the weight and power of the copyright owners/holders of the work that the Lexicon book theoretically discusses. Maybe it's just me, but when it comes to writing a book, shouldn't the Lexicon website have been more of an organization guide for SVA, rather than the actual content?
Again, I believe that the combination of the perceived need to publish ASAP and the expectation of a high payoff motivated them to rush forth without a) RDR checking the quality of the content on the Lexicon site and b) SVA rewriting and editing the Lexicon content before compiling it into book form and beginning the publishing process.
On top of that, RDR originally described the Lexicon book as a piece of scholarly, critical analysis of the HP books...and here we have SVA saying "It wasn't intended to be a scholarly work with endnotes for things like that." *headdesk* No, you just wanted to pass it off as such so as to get away with regurgitating someone else's work without any substantial effort made to infuse any kind of originality into it.
All in all, laziness and greed seem to be the biggest culprits in this case. =/