And in some regards Vander Ark has taken her words, at times quoting directly from Rowling in interviews she's given:
"I don't believe in witchcraft, though I've lost count of the number of times I've been told I'm a practicing witch. Ninety - let's say ninety five percent at least, of the magic in the books in entirely invented by me. And I've used things from folklore and I've used bits of what people used to believe worked magically just to add a certain flavor, but I've always twisted them to suit my own ends. I mean, I've taken liberties with folklore to suit my plot."
- J.K. Rowling on magic in the books (HPM)
But at the same time, he's also collated various essays from fans on topics dealing with the relevant issues:
- Familiarity, A Key to Understanding Spellwork essay by Paul Dionne
What is interesting, even though this is is a fictitious story we're debating about, is the idea of officialness and its position as priviliged over 'unofficial' or 'rivalling' or 'fan' collections or archives. When we examine this in either media or history, we can see just how important this idea of officialness really is.
In media and history, the term official is a priviliged and ultimately highly sought after position, it brings about it an air of 'rightness' and infallibility. This idea can somewhat account for the formation of encyclopedia's as vestiges of the official literature/narrative and official accounts of certain events/objects/people.
But in the digital age, where the producer-consumer model is slowly being blurred, and the idea of sharing information, experiences, common knowledge and a swav of other things is fast becoming the norm, 'official' documents are now very wary of protecting their status. Things like creativecommons and Wikipedia represent the two biggest 'unofficial' collective works/archives on the Internet today and challenge this idea of the singular official entity or narrative as the predominant source or archive. This challenge has been one of the bigger issues of contention with the internet and the digital mediascape, particulary with the supposed advent (though, the Internet has always possessed such qualities from its very first inception) of Web 2.0.
So what does this mean for official archives in the future? Are they on their way out? What are the advantages of having these 'unofficial' sources, and how should we treat them as sources of information? Academia seems to be cautious to their uptake as 'acceptable' sources, but it seems like a matter of when rather than if these days.
What are your thoughts on the matter?
3 comments:
I can understand the legal position of Rowling. Because she has already acknowledged the Lexicon as a great web archive, it's not as though she's morally opposed to the existence of free commons information.
I think the crux of this situation lies in the fact that the injunction is sought so that she can complete work on her own encyclopaedia of the HP Universe. The profits of this book are being, like her Hogwarts schoolbooks (published a few years back for comic relief) are going entirely to charity.
What was Vander-Ark going to do with the money?
JK Rowling is quite clearly a megalomaniac, the books are about teenage witches and no, I haven't read any of them. But seriously folks, what is the deal? Why so popular? Why so SERIOUS? A bunch of books about spell-casting kids does not make a "universe", unless you are talking about a hermeneutically sealed universe which exists solely for marketing purposes. Do we really need an "encyclopaedia" of this imaginary world? I think kids could do with a little more time with an encyclopaedia which attempts to describe THIS world, the one we actually live in.
And many billionaires tend to be fairly philanthropic, they can't spend it all and they have to assuage their consciences somehow, and perhaps improve their tax position (oh how cynical!). I am all for people trying to ride on their sorcerer's coat-tails... ;)
Pfft. I don't think that whether or not we need one is the question. I think Michael is rather addressing the idea of the formally published archive and whether or not the legal action demonstrates its demise. And then within that of course, there's the kettle o' fish concerning web archive.
It doesn't matter how big or how popular the product, if it's Harry Potter or an obscure Academic Journal. People don't dig it when they work really hard on something and someone else nicks it.
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