J. R. Tomlin:
The fact that she had given the website an award (and admittedly used it herself) then sues has left quite a few people shaking their head.
Well the situation seems to be a little more complicated than that. From the reports coming out within the HP community, it appears that the author originally asked for Rowling's permission to publish a book version of his website and she refused. This kind of suggests to me that he realised he'd need the permission of the copyright owner before he went ahead and published but when it was refused, decided to go ahead with it anyway.
From RDR's statements, the book appears to be a hard copy version of what's on the site (which, if you check it out is a mixture of fan essays on Rowling's world and a compendium of short entries on spells, characters, time-lines etc). Unfortunately, not all of those essays were written by the author of the book and there's currently a big question mark as to whether those essays that don't belong to him are going to be published without the original author's permission. The author has claimed not, the publisher seems to be claiming otherwise. Regardless of what you think of fandom, I think most people here would agree that publishing an essay that you haven't written without the permission of the original author and without giving them remuneration is not cool.
Finally, there's a massive difference between an author sanctioning a resource that's available for free on the internet and the owner of that site then deciding to try and make money off it. Both RDR and Steve Vander Ark seem to have a head in the sand approach to the seriousness of this and RDR's statements aren't reassuring as to their having a professional attitude.
MM
