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JK Rowling Accused of Plagiarism

My group chose to discuss the topic of JK Rowling being accused of Plagiarism in 2010.


http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2010/0218/J.K.-Rowling-faces-another-plagiarism-suit

The aspect I am going to discuss is the connections between JK Rowling and the man who accused her, Adrian Jacobs. In 1987, Jacobs wrote a book called "The Adventures of Willy the Wizard: No. 1 Livid Land." He claims that there are many similarities between his book and JK Rowling's "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire." Obviously, because Jacobs’ book was written in 1987, he could accuse Rowling of plagiarism and not vice versa. Now, off the bat, this case seems questionable. Wizards and magic have been favored literary topics for centuries. Jacobs cannot go and say that Rowling copied him by having her main character be a young wizard. However, there are some connections between the two authors, Jacobs and Rowling that do make this case look suspicious.  Rowling’s agent, Christopher Little, was once Jacob’s agent.  Rowling has been quoted of using authors such as Chaucer, Shakespeare and C. S. Lewis as inspirations, yet claims to have never read Jacobs book.  But how can we be certain that Rowling didn’t subconsciously use ideas from her inspirations, and possibly other authors, such as Jacobs.  We cannot be certain.  Lauren Barack, a writer for the Library Journal, has stated, “they do mirror many archetypes and story arcs found in popular tales."  With these connections in mind,  it is probably best to check out this accusation to see if it is in fact true.

J.K. Rowling's Plagiarism-the case/trial

Again in October of 2010, J.K. Rowling was accused of plagiarism in her renowned and famous books "Harry Potter." According to representatives of Adrian Jacobs, Rowling had copied his 16-page book in "Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire." According to sources, both books have manys similarities. Jacobs wrote a book about wizards, their secret schools, special wizarding places, magic powders as travel mechanicisms, and games on magical trains. In the "Goblet of Fire," Rowling has used many of these places or objects to write her book. She claims that her storyline is original but readers and other sources can see the similarites in both books. Rowling's case is to go to trial in 2011. The media expects it to be a "billio" dollar case with lots of public media and dispute.


Source: http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2010/10/18/plagiarism-suit-harry-potter-author-jk-rowling-allowed-proceed/

J.K. Rowling

Our group is talking about how J.K. Rowling was charged with plagiarism. She was charged by the children's author Adrian Jacobs.He claimed that she had stolen his ideas and placed them in her book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of fire, which came out in 2000. She "stole" ideas such as wizard contests, prisons, hospitals, and colleges. We do not really know if it was Rowling's intention to "plagiarize" but if it was, she not once cited other authors. This is where maybe other authors got the idea that she stole their work. but in essence she used her own ideas. Rowling is known to be one of the famous/wealthiest authors these days, which is why some people might want to put law suits on her. But she has recently won her suits.

What I think about J.K. Rowling

I think that the articles bring up many good points. It is hard to prove that she had plagiarized because in many cases you cannot say whether or not she even read the other stories or not. Also the article tells how the United States has the "fair use" policy which is something that a lot of people don't know about. To be completely honest I think that anyone that is successful gets picked on and when people know you are loaded they will try to take everything away from you. Many people sue now a days because they think they have a chance to get some wealth out of it. I think that if J.K. Rowling were to at least say what her inspirations were more people would get off her back. Because she does not say her inspirations many people think there is no way she just made up the wizard ideas, etc. on her own. Overall I think that J.K. Rowling does not plagiarize it is just people trying to be greedy.

JK Rowling accused of plagiarism

This article shows how J.K. Rowling was accused of plagiarizing on two accounts. One she was accused of copying the character Harry Potter from a character by the author Stouffer named "Larry Potter." It tells that she was also accused of copying concepts of wizards, wizard colleges, wizard hospitals, etc. from the author Jacobs. He claims that the story "Goblet of Fire" uses his ideas from "The Adventures of Willy the Wizard: No. 1 Livid Land." J.K. Rowling was not charged with plagiarism in either case. It has been noted however, that Rowling has never cited a single authors works as her inspiration for Harry Potter. The article also tells that there is a difference between copying and fair use. This is important because if there was no such thing as fair use every single little thing would have to be quoted and it would "restrict creativity."

Kehe, Marjorie. "J.K. Rowling Faces Another Plagiarism Suit - CSMonitor.com." The Christian Science Monitor - CSMonitor.com. The Christian Science Monitor, 8 Feb. 2010. Web. 06 Oct. 2011. .

Tuesday's Reflection

On Tuesday’s class period, I learned that although we didn’t use computers, we managed to be effective in our work and get a rough draft of our story book done. By allowing us time in class to work together, I believe that we were able to express our ideas and opinions to each other. For project one, we didn’t get much time in class to work together and it resulted in a lot of confusion and questions. Also on project one we didn’t quite understand the concept of the project and what we were supposed to do. But I believe now that we have an understanding of how to use a blog and the concept of project 2, we are better prepared to start and turn in our project.
On Tuesday, we each took turns expressing how we imagine the project and what our goals for the project are. Once we found a common ground, we chose our main target of audience as families because “Finding Nemo” was a loveable Disney classic that showed a father’s love for his son. By targeting families again with this project, we can give them another classic story, with a twist. We also show our visual aid to be a story book. We want this book to represent a children’s book, with vibrant pictures and colors. We want parents to be able to read this to their children and have the kids fall in love with the new story and its twist.
As a group, we have delegated who will be contributing what part to this project. We have also decided to each work on a page or two for the story book. Although the drawings will be different, we will keep the same storyline and give everyone a chance to put their own artist touch on this book. By doing this, we are all involved in the making of the book and after discussing our ideas, we have all come up with a good storyline for the book.
I believe that our group will be productive, effective and will work well with each other. I am looking forward to working with them and creating our new story book.

Tuesday Reflection

I really enjoyed class on Tuesday. It was nice being able to not have to do something that dealt with technology. I felt like that class was a good break from it. Also, it ended up turning out to be fun. We got to draw out in pictures what our story was going to be about, which was pretty interesting. We came up with the idea of having divers find Nemo. So in one picture we drew Nemo, then we had a diver diving into the water and finding Nemo. The pictures told the story so well that we decided we were going to elaborate on that idea and turn the final project into a children's book. Also I thought the note card idea that we did was creative, having to write down something about your project. That allowed all of us to see what other ideas and things other groups were doing. I'd say that doing what we did today was a good way of getting us to communicate and open up our ideas with each other. I liked the way that we worked together and were all on the same page, which allowed us in the end to be able to agree about doing the children's book instead of making a power point. I feel like another day like this would be really helpful in allowing us to finalize our ideas and begin piecing our project. My group member have all been really helpful and done a good job. I can't wait to see what our final project ends up looking like.

What i've learned

During Tuesday's activity I found out that our project needs to be more then just facts. It should be informational but also be appealing to the audience. We found out that we can do this in several ways. We saw that we should maybe include our own pictures, so we each chipped in and drew something. It actually ended up being really fun and we got super creative. We thought that it would be cool to have pictures that should represent our story. We decided to put a twist on our project about finding nemo. we wanted the scuba divers to find nemo instead of taking him. We thought that the pictures would really help this visual. We also decided on making our pictures into a children's book as well. We want to appeal to a younger audience and thats probably one of the better ways to keep our audience interested. I learned from other groups that they are making their projects through comic books or have a completely different storyline then ours. Some groups are doing it on spirituality and i thought that was pretty cool. some of the advice people gave to us was to use lots of color and to be informative about our project. This will help me in this class because being informative will make us more reliable as people and to be interesting to all audiences. This is helping me develop as a better writer because I learned that its okay to put your own characrteristics in your writing. I also learned that there are so many different ways to write and the different genres that you can go about. I like writing like this because it allows us to be us in our writing and we can write about what WE are actually interested in. So far project two has been awesome and i love my group!

Class "Reflection"

I thought that today it was nice to step away from the computer for once. I felt like it was a good way to get everyone’s attention and really talk about our project and where it was heading. I thought that the group worked well to create some good visuals. I also liked stepping away from the technology that we are always surrounded with because sometimes I get confused in class and working with paper every once in a while just helps clear your head. By looking at other groups projects I thought it was really cool the things they came up with. I would have never thought of making a flip book or a comic strip and I think that a lot of good creativity came up today in class.

At first I thought that my group was going to do a power point but once we got started today with our pictures we ended up really liking the direction we were heading and changed our visual aspect of the project to a children’s story. We sorted out our ideas and figured out stronger ways to convey our messages. I think that something we should add to our children’s story is a moral of some type because I think that most children’s stories have one and it makes them more memorable to the reader when they contain one.

Something I didn’t really get much out of today was the ‘card scramble.’ The group that I was with was doing their project about someone’s spiritual journey and I really felt that my project did not at all relate. However, through the process of mixing with other people in the class I was able to see the direction other groups were heading which helped me to see if we were on the right track.

So far my group is doing a good job of putting out ideas and working together and I hope that it stays like this. It will make the project less stressful and we can all be proud at the end. I felt like today I was able to let out the (small) creative side that I have and figure things out. It was also a good way to mingle with the other group members and get more comfortable because before we were all still kind of used to our groups from project one. It will be very helpful once we begin project two to be comfortable with each other.

Overall I would say that I learned a lot in class today. I think that although technology is great and necessary, sometimes it can be extremely useful to just put down everything and work with less tech savvy things. It’s not very often anymore that a teacher hands you paper and says “draw what comes to mind” and I think sometimes that is exactly what you need. Before class today I really had no idea what we were doing and now I have a clear picture of what I would like the final product of this project to look like.

My Reflections on Doodling

Today in class, instead of using the technology of Facebook, Blogger, Moodle and the like, we took time away from the computer and doodled.  This was a nice change of pace.  It definitely caught me off guard.  I just expected the same old same old.  This was a nice change and an unexpected surprise.  I hope to have these in the future.  Sometimes it is just nice to take a break from whatever you are working on. 

My group’s project in on how we found Nemo.  This is a slightly different story than the original Disney/Pixar version.  In our version, Nemo does get lost, but rather than being fish-napped (not kidnapped because Nemo is a clownfish), he is rescued by a scuba diver.  And with our project we are going to show and illustrate how Nemo became lost and how he was found in the end.   

Today during class, we were confused about what to do with the paper and colored pencils.  Like I mentioned previously, this was extremely out of the norm.  But once we got going, this exercise helped us plan out our storyline.  Now we know what we want our story to get across and what we want everyone to get from our story.  Plus, we had some free time to just doodle and plan out where we wanted our project to go.

The second half of class we did a “card scramble” if I remember correctly.  Again, we were unsure where it was going.  Write a goal for your project and then throw it on the floor?  What?  Well, despite that, it was also a helpful exercise.  Breaking our groups up and having us discuss different group goals and issues, as well as, having us share our project themes, was a good idea.  It gave my group good ideas for the future, as well as, if I had not talked with other groups I don’t think that I would have ever known what the other projects were on.  That happened with the last project.  I didn’t know about the others until we discussed them in the end.  I am glad we got to share our project ideas and goals.

What did I learn from this class?  I learned through this class that simple exercises such as the doodling one that good ideas, brainstorming and product can be produced.  I don’t know when my group would have made these decisions on what our project was going to be about if we had not done this activity.  We just needed to take the time to brainstorm.  This stress free exercise worked.  We could go anywhere with our thoughts and ideas.  That was nice about this exercise—it didn’t limit us by an means.  As for the card scramble, like I mentioned, it was also a helpful exercise because I not only learned something about the other group projects, but it gave my group members and I good ideas for our project.  A very useful and productive class activity in disguise!