The Harry Potter Lexicon Situation

Remember Steve Vander Ark, the guy who created the website The Harry Potter Lexicon and who cried during his testimony when J.K. Rowling and Warner Brothers sued RDR Books for trying to publish a print version? If not, here's a good synopsis of the court case.

As it turns out, Vander Ark eventually did get to publish the book, although it was greatly modified to meet the restrictions specified by the court. And, with a dash of irony, he'll be having a book-signing right near the old cafe where Rowling first wrote Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone(Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone, for those outside of the U.S.).

I'm still not crazy about what Vander Ark did. Originally, anyway. It's one thing to be an obsessive fan and to create a website about something you enjoy. It's another thing entirely to publish a book containing material written by someone else (according to one of the original complaints, many of Rowling's passages were contained within the encyclopedia without any quotes or attributions distinguishing them from Vander Ark's text).

However, as it seems the legal issues have been worked out, there's not much more to discuss.