What's Leaky up to? (was Re: Prayers For Lexicon Steve)

[Tim Regan]

Hi All,

As an atheist I'm not sure Steve Vander Ark would find my prayers 
that useful, but I do share the sentiment. At first I was totally 
bemused by this court case. I met Steve Vander Ark at Accio 2005 
where he gave the post-banquet speech and if that's anything to go by 
he is/was the biggest squeeing fan-boy in the world. The impression I 
got was that if JKR had asked him to sacrifice his first-born he'd 
have thought about it. So how it got to the point where it went to 
court is beyond me.

However as with most things once I've learnt more I've got more 
confused. Each new explanation from either side convinces me! Big 
thanks to Steve here. I am not a lawyer and I do not understand 
copyright, fair use provisions, etc but the most useful way to 
approach this seems to be by looking in detail at Lexicon entries and 
deciding if it is a useful and creative addition.

As a non-HP non-copyright example when I'm looking things up in the 
bible I make extensive use of an old edition of Cruden's concordance 
that my dad gave me. All Cruden did was to pore through the bible and 
provide an index where one can look up any word and see which verses 
contain it. So, for example, if you watch a film where one of the 
characters repeatedly uses the phrase "It's better to be a live dog 
than a dead lion" and you have a vague recollection that it's 
biblical you can look up "dog" to discover that the quote is from 
Ecclesiastes 9:4 "For to him that is joined to all the living there 
is hope: for a living dog is better than a dead lion". Now this is 
all much more easily and comprehensively completed online but 
sometimes you just don't want to dig out and fire up the laptop. It's 
a great work. Perhaps JKR should have let Steve present her with the 
first edition of the printed lexicon just as Queen Caroline accepted 
the first concordance from Cruden in 1737.

But who knows, perhaps it would be a breach of JKR's copyright. 
Luckily the professionals in the court room know a lot more about 
these things than me (my all time lowest test score was 15% in a law 
paper that was reputed to be so easy that candidates got 20% for 
writing their name!) Which brings me to Leaky. As a fan, and a bit of 
an aging fan at that, I like to get my HP news from trusted sources, 
so TLC is important to me. How weird is it that I can turn to the 
BBC, CNN, Mugglenet, etc etc, for up to the minute news about the 
trial but Leaky is empty! I was down heartened when they broke up The 
Floo Network because of the case, but not reporting it is stranger 
still.


Cheers,


Dumbledad.

PS I noticed in the BBC piece that Steve Vander Ark's moved to 
London. Perhaps we should resurrect 
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-London/ and arrange a heavy 
drinking session to share condolences, congratulations, 
disagreements, support, etc with Steve. Though as I type I can sense 
that might so not be what he wants now!