Queen of the Universe

Dear Ms. Rowling,

Perhaps it is lost upon you that when people purposefully do things that make them rich and famous, they are no longer the same sort of "private citizen" they were when they were penniless weasels.

Bad enough that you and your shill, Warner Brothers, won your scurrilous lawsuit against a fan (he may be a little over the top in his admiration for your derivative works, but that's another story); now, it seems, a Scottish court has done what a sensible English court refused to do. It has found that indeed, it is a violation of your son's privacy for those fascinated by your inexplicable fame and wealth to take photographs of him. I wonder: Do you believe, like the hill people of Tibet, that taking his photograph will steal his soul? I doubt it. I think, rather, that you wish to take all the photos yourself and then sell them so you can....hmmmm....make more money, some half of one percent of which you will then vociferously give to charity.

I just read some headlines in which American college students opined that you are a "flash in the pan." I truly hope they are correct. Your books are not great literature; they are children's books, for crying out loud, and not in the Newbury Prize vein, either. Your books are probably popular because of the dumbing down of most populations, most places. In fact, it gave me a great deal of hope to note the U.S. college students have seen through you.

I also reread a blog posted by an author of a computer game whose work was widely disseminated as you were writing your own derivative tales. He noted that he had not gone after you, when it appears he might have done and won. He also pointed out that a female author had lost a copyright suit you brought against her. Her work about a wizard named Larry Potter was on the market first, so I don't know how you won that one. Perhaps she is a wizard, and picked your brain before even you knew what was in it, and you were magically able to prove that to the satisfaction of a judge not unlike Judge Patterson of New York. Or perhaps she simply hadn't had Warner Brothers' skirts to hide behind, nor treasury to use against you.

Your behavior has been, in a word, despicable. I have written at some length recently over the desirability of living in a nation where noblesse oblige is still in force, making it incumbent upon the 'haves' to at least pretend to value and care for the 'have nots.' That place was England. You have moved to Scotland. I think I can see why.

Sincerely,

Laura Harrison McBride

JK Rowling Railroads Potter Lexicographer

Stanford University Law Schools' Center for the Internet and Society was on the side of the publisher who wanted to issue a lexicon of the convoluted--and mainly stolen from the writings of antiquity--universe in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. A judge in New York City has now put another nail in the coffin of free speech and free enterprise in the United States. In addition, while avowing the opposite, his knee-jerk (and I'm being kind here) decision has put the screws to most commercial criticism, the kind real people and not just academics, might actually buy and read.

The judge, Robert Patterson, said that the RDR "Lexicon appropriates too much of Rowling's creative work for its purposes as a reference guide". And he, I suppose, is the ultimate arbiter of how much is too much.

Even Rowling apparently has trouble with that concept. In 2004, Rowling herself had awarded the website on which the pre-empted lexicon was based an award for excellence. Worse yet, Rowling herself admitted that part of her reason for bringing suit (aided and abetted by Warner Brothers) was that now the author and publisher wanted to make money. When they ran the free website, of course, any money anyone wanted to spend went directly to Rowling, or perhaps Warner Brothers, which produced at least two totally execrable installments of the antiquities-laden supposedly original series.

It is, in a word, despicable. Here is a woman who, if you wish to believe her own backstory--and I'm not sure I do--was a welfare mom sitting in a cafe (Starbucks or similar, in which case what the heck on welfare was she using to pay for coffee there?) trying to pen a little story that would let her put better pablum in Junior Rowling's hungry little mug. So I guess she must have had all those classic writers committed to memory, or she'd probably have had to spend at least some of her time in a major academic library, stealing from the dead. The dead, one will note, cannot sue in a court in New York State, nor do they have the deep pockets and boundless greed of Warner Brothers to egg them on. They're dead. For a long time. But it's still their work. There was no such thing as copyright back then.

(To quote an old TV show, Car 54, Where Are You? "Oooh, oooh,oooh," what about writing a story about, for instance, Homer come back to life and pairing up with Warner Brothers to sue anyone who ever wrote any sort of story based, however loosely, on The Odyssey?)

Frankly, Ms. Rowling makes me sick. This former downtrodden welfare mom (snicker, snicker) has sold out so far that she now belongs to the "circle up those Cadillacs" crowd, using fair means and foul to prevent anyone profiting one nickel off her own ill-gotten gains. But then, honor among thieves is thin on the ground, still.

If I had ever entertained the thought of buying a Harry Potter book (and I hadn't; they are really sort of simplistic, a true dumbing-down of the material she used as reference material, although the better term might be template), I would not now. If I had entertained a thought of watching one of those "B" movies (particularly the buffoonery I admit to having watched once, directed by Chris Columbus), that is now firmly dead and buried.

I hope most writers are not cynical and rapacious; I hope, if I ever write anything with half the reach and income draw of the Potter books, that I will not begrudge someone else profiting by using my material as a base for their own, as long as they don't plagiarize.

I have been plagiarized, and it isn't fun. Maddening, really. My work for a niche publication was once lifted word for word by a national publication, and I had no recourse. But then, I also didn't have Warner Brothers to pay my bills and I hadn't based it on the classics. It was a story about bloodhounds.

But RDR and its writer did not plagiarize, at all. Even Rowling/Warner didn't try to send that balloon aloft. RDR and its writer simply researched Potter's work and wanted to issue a guidebook, if you will, to the world of Harry Potter. Such a work would be not unlike a Biblical concordance, although it pains me to put Ms. Rowling in the same sentence as the seminal religious work of the western world. I trust she will leave that work strictly alone, however; the Vatican is much more powerful than Warner Brothers and might have a go at her with Judge Patterson.