Now if you’re not really deep into Harry Potter you’ve probably never heard of Potterwar. I first heard about it a few years ago when watching the documentary ‘We Are Wizards’, which is all about Harry Potter fan culture. Essentially Potterwar is the story of how Harry potter fans went up against Warner Bros and won. It’s kind of a long complicated story but for the sake of this post I’m going to summarise it.
In 2000, the first Harry Potter movie started production and the fan base was growing by the day. Fans from all over the world start using the internet as a place to share their Harry Potter love, many creating fan sites. Warner Bros was not happy about this because these fans sites were using words and phrases which were copyright, such as ‘Hogwarts’ and ‘Dumbledore’. Warner Bros started to send cease and desist letters to the owners of these fan sites. Bear in mind, most of the people running the fan sites at the time were around the age of 13.
Led by a girl named Heather Lawver, who was just 15 at the time, many of the people running these sites refused to shut down. Instead they organised a worldwide boycott, refusing to purchase anything Harry Potter that was owned by Warner Bros, only spending money on the original books.
And it worked. Warner Bros lost so much money during the boycott that they retracted the letters and allowed people to continue using the copyrighted words and phrases. Potterwar was a big win for the people and set a precedent, giving more freedom to what people could do online.
If you want the whole story, as told by Heather herself, you can check out the blog post she made about it here.
Briana Williams 
I had never heard of the potterwar before.. definitely an interesting read! and amazing how something like that was achieved by someone so young. Just goes to show the power the public can have over copyright laws provided by major corporations trying to protect their money makers. #bcm112
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However maybe you could have included your take on the events or your point of view on copyright in this instance to stay away from summarising to much 🙂
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I’m a huge Harry Potter fan yet I had never heard of the Potterwar until now! A great read and shows not only how powerful and effective people can be but also how powerful and controlling copyright can allow corporations to be. I agree with DENIKAALEXANDRA that your own point of view on the matter would have made this post less of a summary. Also perhaps quoting or paraphrasing Heather’s own blog post directly would have helped support the post.
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I’d never heard about this before! Probably because I barely knew what computers were back in 2000. How did you find out about it? Thats so fascinating! Like the others, I think maybe a bit more personal input would have made the post pop a bit more, but I understand the limitations of the word count. Also, don’t forget to reference properly!
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Wow Briana this is such an interesting post! I love how you linked it in with Harry Potter! Thanks for such an interesting post, you rock!
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