J. K. Rowling versus the Harry Potter Lexicon
Unlike a Potter film or computer game, the authors of the Lexicon encyclopedia are not simply moving Potter to another medium. Their purpose, rather, is providing a reference guide with description and discussion, rather like a very long and detailed book review. Such guides have been around forever—centuries if you count the Bible, and more recently for complex works like the writings of Jorge Borges or The Lord of the Rings. As long as a guide does not copy the original work verbatim, it falls outside the category of “adaptation.” And that’s why it is largely unnecessary to discuss the more complex copyright doctrine of “fair use.” Rowling’s rights over the guide don’t exist to begin with, so we don’t need to go there.
This can be made clear by looking at a typical Lexicon entry, like this one for the “house elf,” the character who does the scut work in the Potter universe. “House-elves,” says the encyclopedia, “are small humanoid creatures who inhabit large houses belonging to wealthy Wizarding families.”
For a fan to write this kind of entry, Rowling says, is to “take the author’s hard work, re-organize their characters and plots, and sell them for their own commercial gain.” But that’s ridiculous. This and other entries aren’t, as Rowling seems to suggest, anything like an abridgment of the originals. No one would read the Lexicon as a substitute for the Potter books; it is useless unless you’ve read the original, and that makes all the difference.
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