If you’re a fan of the Harry Potter books and J.K. Rowling, and were alive during the month of April of 2008, you probably heard about a little law suit over a book called “The Harry Potter Lexicon.”  The author of that book, Steve Vander Ark, is also the creator and editor of the Harry Potter Lexicon website.  We got a chance to talk with Steve about the lawsuit, the fan reactions, his new book and, of course, we talked a bit about Harry Potter (you know, the books about this boy wizard…oh never mind).  It’s a fascinating interview, hope you enjoy it.  We here at HPProgs believe in hearing all points of view, and hope that you will feel free to voice your opinions in the comments, while remaining respectful and rational in the process.

A big thanks to Steve for taking the time to talk with us.

Check out Steve’s new book entitled In Search of Harry Potter.

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Don’t forget to get your entries in for the Harry Potter/Beedle the Bard/YouTube Contest!  You can win a free copy of the Deluxe edition of the new Beedle the Bard book (that’s the $100 fancy version).

You can listen to the episode with the player below, or download it directly as an mp3.

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In what will go down in history as being HPProgs’ finest hour *or* our worst episode yet, we bring to you Episode #77. We decided to go a slightly different route for part of this episode and after our very short news discussion we re-enacted part of the J.K. Rowling vs. Steve Vander Ark/RDR Books trial. All we can say is that those of you who called Greg’s accent rubbish are going to wish you had saved your insults. On a side note, when I was editing the episode I realized that we botched the name of SVA’s lawyer. It is David Hammer, not Barry. Apologies to Mr. Hammer.

Speaking of accents, we played a voicemail from Potter’s Number One Fan in which he picked up Greg’s gauntlet and gave us a multi-character Harry Potter narration. Excellent job, in my opinion.

We finished off the episode with the introduction to Patterns In Potter for “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix”. You’ll have to trust that we are telling the truth when we say that Book 5 has a good theme.

As promised the links to the court transcripts are here. Thanks to Cris for the tip:

• Day 1
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• Day 3
  

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We look forward to hearing from you. You can leave comments here on the blog or send in your voicemails to 206-337-0357 in the US or 07092899490 in the UK. Please make sure to keep the message as close to one minute as possible and try to speak loudly and clearly.

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This week, we take a break from the Patterns in Potter series to disucss the court case currently underway in New York between J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros. on one side, and RDR Books and Steve Vander Ark on the other. There’s been excellent coverage of the trial (and interesting comments) over on the WSJ Law Blog, make sure to check that out.

In the mean time, if you have a thought or opinion about the case, leave a comment or a message and we’ll play it our next podcast. We look forward to hearing from you. You can leave comments here on the blog or send in your voicemails to 206-337-0357 in the US or 07092899490 in the UK. Please make sure to keep the message as close to one minute as possible and try to speak loudly and clearly.

No news this week, other than, you know, that court thingee. We will continue the Patterns in Potter series next week, beginning Book 5, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

You can listen to the podcast using the player below, or download it directly as an mp3.

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