JK Rowling Goes to Court over Harry Potter

Julia, for being a writer, you REALLY DON’T GET IT. Telling a writer that she MUST share her cre­ative mate­r­ial is like telling an artist that he must allow other peo­ple to apply paint to his can­vas. She cre­ated Harry Pot­ter, and nobody but her has the right to grant per­mis­sion or demand per­mis­sion to use that cre­ative mate­r­ial. If you cre­ate an idea and some­one else begins mak­ing money off of it, how would you feel? Maybe you’d be will­ing to let another cre­ative per­son engage in such an endeavor, but you should never be forcibly obligated.

While it would have been nice to see JKR’s cre­ative skills com­bined with Steve’s anal-retentive OCD orga­niz­ing skills (yes, he’s very very good at that), it should still be up to JK. If she wants to grant per­mis­sion, then that’s fine, but nobody should tell her that she must.

Col­lab­o­ra­tive expe­ri­ences in writ­ing work for some peo­ple, but not for all. I’ve writ­ten a novel, and when I first began, I had sev­eral peo­ple ask me if they could co-write with me. Other peo­ple wanted to offer plot sug­ges­tions. I told them to bug­ger off, and cre­ated a wildly suc­cess­ful story. It’s mine, and nobody else’s. Can you not under­stand that that sort of own­er­ship means? What sort of writer are you?

Also, you don’t know Steve. I DO. He’s a guy who used to be decent, but who has gone com­pletely off his rocker over this. I watched this whole thing unfold first-hand, I know the peo­ple who got tan­gled up in it, and it’s ludicrous.

And finally… if you’re a writer, you’re not very good at it. You’ve got painful mis­spellings and sen­tence frag­ments galore. If you think JKR is a snob, then I would hon­estly sus­pect that it’s out of sheer jeal­ousy. She’s a bril­liantly suc­cess­ful woman who has EARNED every scrap of fame and for­tune she’s achieved. If you want that for your­self, then go write some­thing bet­ter. Steve can do the same.

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She sent cease-and-desist let­ters to Steve, and Steve couldn’t get over his mountain-sized ego. He’s a pompous git. He asked a few peo­ple I know if they’d illus­trate the book for him, and led them to believe that JKR had approved it. One of my friends man­aged to get out of her con­tract with Steve and RDR books the day after she signed it when I told her that Steve didn’t have approval for the book. The young woman was shocked to find out, and scared that she’d be sued along with Steve.

Oh, and you know how the CNN arti­cle says that Steve moved to Lon­don to begin a career as a writer? HA HA HA. I’ll tell you the real rea­son. He moved there to be with his mistress/girlfriend, who is half his age. They’ve been hav­ing an affair for quite a while now. His wife and kids were left behind. Want details and proof? Just ask.

I hope JKR squishes him. He’d deserve it. His stu­pid­ity tar­nishes the good rep­u­ta­tion of the fan base, and threat­ens to put our fun at risk. JKR has always given us a lot of lib­erty, and the last thing we need is Ego-Man Steve to turn our inno­cent fun into a copyright-threatened nightmare.

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