Dark Arts

Jo Rowling is sueing the author of an unauthorized Harry Potter encylopedia. She apparently claims that his book is a threat to her next billion bucks. I'm no lawyer, but it sounds to me like she has no case - the proposed encyclopedia is almost certainly a critical work of the type protected by fair use laws. On the other hand, she, unlike the author, has the money and lawyers to summon up plenty of practitioners of the dark arts to crush him.

I suspect she would do more for her future earnings and the artistic integrity of her work if she would do something about the increasingly stinko movie versions of the books - each one seemingly worse than the last.

Of course it's pretty clear that she has lost touch with her story - that stupid bit about Dumbledore being gay, for example. How she could confuse a minor homoerotic element of a relationship with sexual orientation is really a mystery to me. Of course, she made the obverse mistake with Ginny. Pretty much everybody but Harry and Jo knew that she was a lesbian - which turned out to be responsible for the unfortunate breakup of their marriage after the birth of their first child.

Rowling was also too obtuse to notice that Ron was much too dumb and boring for Hermione - another early divorce, of course.

Perhaps Rowling is sueing in the hope of being able to fix those little blunders in her version of the encyclopedia. Here's hoping she gets handed her ass on the suit.

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