Rowling Sues Harry Potter Lexicon 527
Snape kills Trinity with Rosebud writes "Apparently famous authors don't like it if you try to make a buck using their imaginary property because J.K. Rowling is suing the publishers of the Harry Potter Lexicon for infringement. This should prove an interesting test case for fair use given that the lexicon contains mostly factual information about the series, not copies of the books' text. Of course, both sides seem a bit touchy about imaginary property rights, with Rowling's lawyers being miffed after being told to print it themselves when they asked for a paper copy of the lexicon's website, and the lexicon website itself using one of those insipid right click disabling scripts."
she's right (Score:1, Insightful)
I hope she wins now, but not 60 years later, like Disney who doesn't want his earliest works to fall in the PD.
Well, she needs to eat. (Score:1, Insightful)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_female_billionaires [wikipedia.org]
Re:Out of creative juice.. become an IP vulture. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Out of creative juice.. become an IP vulture. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Out of creative juice.. become an IP vulture. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:well that's funny (Score:5, Insightful)
And there's the crux of the matter. If the publishers/creators/whatever of this lexicon had sat down and hammered out a deal with the HP publishers, there wouldn't be a court case. But it looks like they're trying to do an end run around those publishers, possibly in order to keep all the potential cash for themselves.
Which is damned foolish, considering the amount of money they're going to have spend on lawyers.
"imaginary property" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:well that's funny (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems like Mrs Rowling is getting all too greedy (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:well that's funny (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of people seem to feel the situation is different because she made a billion or so off the Potter series. Why legally has her situation changed since she was an out of work single mother handwriting a novel? She worked for more than a decade creating the characters so why shouldn't she have the right to control her work? If she allows people to freely expand on her work then she looses control and it becomes something she never intended. It happened with Robert E Howard's work after his death. Many other authors added to his mythologies but none of them equaled the original and most were just trying to make a buck off something popular. Nothing is stopping any of these people from creating original works but they know it's easier to get noticed if you lift from something popular. This is more about taking the easy road to success than creating something. She didn't take the easy road so why should others be allowed to ride her coat tails? Rowlings got lucky with the success of the series but I'm thrilled for her. She's not part of the evil empire she's a little person that made good and crossed over. She should be an axample to everyone not some one to villify when she tries to protect her creation.
Re:well that's funny (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:well that's funny (Score:5, Insightful)
If her lawyers are working for free I will eat my hat.
In my very limited opinion it is a grey area as to whether this is infringement or not. According to this post [slashdot.org] Rowling was planning a similar book the profits of which would go to charity, so she asked Lexicon to at least do the same which they wouldn't do.
If she is so concerned about getting money to her charity then why not make "the official" version of the book and donate the proceeds to charity, then instead of pushing the boundaries of fair use with a potentially long and expensive trial donate the money she would have spent on a trial to her charity as well?
That way at least the pile of money that would have been swallowed up by lawyers fees goes to charity. So what if Lexicon makes some money off it as well? did they not put some time and effort into this? With a trial instead of Lexicon making some money it is the lawyers on both sides that make the money that charity will never see.
This comes across less like forcing the profits of the book to go to charity and more like being bitter about someone else getting a (tiny) slice of money out of the H.P. empire.
Re:well that's funny (Score:3, Insightful)
- Yes, she can still donate to charity with her own Harry Potter encyclopedia etc. I think this would be a selling point over the strictly for-profit encyclopedia.
- Suing for charity. Yes that is an interesting PR move
- I also wander why she just doesn't use one of her other books (old or up-coming) as a charity vehicle, or just give the wads of cash she already has to charity.
Seems to me her charity statements are more like a PR move for suing than an altruistic statement of fact. Rich people with too much idle time can be burdensome.
Re:Out of creative juice.. become an IP vulture. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:well that's funny (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:"Factual Content" ? NOT. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:well that's funny (Score:3, Insightful)
If she lets this slide, what's next? A "Harry Potter spinoff" series, where some other wizkids experience adventures at Hogwart (was that the name?), cranked out by the dozen by people who could barely write for daily soaps?
Any kind of good and known brand will get milked, given the chance. At least this time it ain't the original author who got greedy and sold the brand to some company to milk the name 'til it is so tainted and drained that nobody wants to hear about it anymore.
Also, I don't know how much control she still retains over her creation. It's quite possible that she isn't too interested in suing, but the IP holders and their lawyers are.
Re: suing for charity... (Score:5, Insightful)
Consider this a learning experience.
Re:Out of creative juice.. become an IP vulture. (Score:4, Insightful)
So Rowling is clearly in the wrong if she insists that the whole H.P. universe is protected because she invented it. Only her words describing that universe are protected. The lexicon has every right to collect and write about each and every item in that universe, using the exact names and concepts and so forth. But it must not use any of Rowlings sentences to do so...
Take a hike, Rowling! (Score:1, Insightful)
Okay, so why not donate to charities from the $1bil+ you already have? Why must you buy a court's prejudice against fair use to make yet more money? If your book isn't going to sell, have you considered it's not because there is competition, but because your other books might suck, or, at least do not capture the interest of your target consumer^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hreader?
Do you see the C.S. Lewis estate suing folks who write books about the Narnia series?
Also, where were you when book reviewers were publishing reviews which contained facts, character names, and plot details from your Harry Potter books? We didn't see news of your suing THEM now, did we? Well, why didn't you? They profited directly from your books by publishing those reviews, you know. . .
Seriously? (Score:3, Insightful)
Ideas cannot be copyrighted!! (Score:2, Insightful)
If I would write another H.P. novel, I would have all the work, so I should get the money, no? You might say that Rowling developed all the characters and should be compensated for that work. I say, she already has been compensated und I had to work hard to get the feeling for the characters and "get them right". So I clearly should be compensated for that work also. The only thing that Rowling can try to enforce is the "Harry Potter" trademark.
But of course greed makes you see things differently...
(IANAL, so my information about and interpretation of copyright law may be wrong, but my moral basics tell me that this is the way it should be)
Re:well that's funny (Score:3, Insightful)
What she plans to do with her money (charity, hookers, whatever) doesn't make a bit of difference, and doesn't oblige the publishers of the lexicon in any way.
The one thing the publishers can't claim is that theirs is official or endorsed. That alone gives Rowling plenty enough of a head-start for her own encyclopedia potter, along with her ability to add details to the world that don't already exist. The lexicon can't do that, or else it loses some validity of its claim to be research if it doesn't extrapolate from known facts (The books, things Rowling's said publicly already).
Now Rowling's best case is probably that she contributed to the website and now her work is going to be used for profit that she doesn't want it to be. Any tacit click-through agreement saying the works contributed belong to the publisher probably won't hold up in court, and it's a valid complaint on J.K's part - but they only need to excise her contributions and continue on a bit unofficially less endorsed.
Really that's the sleaziest thing the lexicon's trying to do IMO and it has proper recourse. The courts should toss J.K. out on her ass for the case that she's actually bringing.
Re:well that's funny (Score:3, Insightful)
NOT Fair Use. (Score:2, Insightful)
"...criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research..."
No. There is no "benefit for society" rationale for this. This is a private, commercial work, done purely for the author's own profit. There is nothing "fair use" about this book AT ALL.
On the other hand, there is an interesting question of whether it actually infringes on *copyright*, per se, due to not really using significant portions of the original work, at least not word-for-word. But that's a different issue.
When people water down the meaning of Fair Use, they're poisoning the well for legitimate uses of it, which are already being trampled left and right.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Take a hike, Rowling! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:well that's funny (Score:3, Insightful)
This case does bear strong resemblance to the lawsuits in the 1990's intended to prevent those books, mainly because the game publishers wanted to stifle competition for the "official" guides. I also remember Adobe even got into the act, trying to forbid a "missing manual" publisher of using screenshots.
The hubris and asshattery on both sides aside, there really should not be an issue with the publication of this book. It is just another in a long line of "unofficial guides".
Re:IANAL, but I am in Law School (Score:3, Insightful)
You may be right, and since I'm not even studying to be a lawyer, I'll presume you are, but this still illustrates how fundamentally broken the copyright system is. Producing study guides on major works has been a staple of literary study for a really long time. Many, many original authors (i.e. Rowling) would never produce such a guide themselves, since writing a guide is significantly different from writing a novel. Where in the hell do they get off believing that they should get a cut off of the labor of someone else? This is just as stupid as that condo association in Chicago that is trying to prevent people from taking pictures of the building that they live in.
Rowling became filthy rich from the Potter world. Good for her. Just because she was successful there shouldn't mean that she (and her children, and her grandchildren) should be guaranteed profit from the labor of anyone else in the world that does something related to that world. It takes a serious amount of work to produce a lexicon such as this; it isn't just a matter of "their minimal contribution in reassembling work". It takes several passes through a work, first recording the names of people, places, etc and on what pages the references occur. Then, go back through each of the terms listed and attempt to pull out a short, meaningful description of them. Next, go back through and try to make sure that you've dealt with all of the various ways that a given thing is referred to, such as He Who Must Not Be Named as an alias for Voldemort. Finally, put everything in some order (typically alphabetical) and do the formal typesetting, etc. I know a guy that wrote a reference guide to the works of James Joyce, and it took him YEARS of work to complete.
Should Rowling be able to make money from her own labor? Sure. Should she have a say in whether some other author can use the characters in new stories or in other products (i.e. the Hitachi Harry Potter Magic Wand, the Hermione G-String Bikini, etc.)? Definitely. Should she be able to prevent people from producing literary criticism, study guides, and scholarly works that are ABOUT the Potter world? Absofuckinglutely not!
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Copyright should even be applies here. (Score:4, Insightful)
" to produce copies or reproductions of the work and to sell those copies"
They aren't copying the works and reselling them.
"to import or export the work"
There aren't importing or exporting the harry potter books.
"works that adapt the original work"
The aren't doing that either.
"to perform or display the work publicly"
The aren't performing or displaying the Harry Potter works.
"to sell or assign these rights to others"
They aren't assigning rights to the harry potter books
Those are the ONLY rights the copyright holder can exercise.
Creating a work about another work is not a violation. See numerous books about Tolkien's work.
This is like saying Rolling Stone Magazine can't talk about specific music, or that movie reviews can't talk about movies, or that dummies books on visual basic violate Microsoft's copyright.
Just imagine Shakespeare in a copyright world (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, I understand the logic behind copyright and patent laws in modern society: we wish to give an incentive to creators to create by giving them unfettered rights to what they create. I also agree that we need to have a system in place to encourage creation.
However, it seems to me that we are reifying the practice: something that we as a society have constructed and continue to construct is being treated as a right in and of itself. I think that JK Rowling and all of the people associated with the "Harry Potter" machine have made enough that the objective of our copyright laws is being fulfilled. It is time for them to let it go.
But they won't. And that is what is scary: our culture is being taken from us and given to corporations. There is no legitimate reason that Mickey Mouse, which is part of our culture and should be free for us all, should still be covered under copyright. Walt Disney is dead. His children are rich (sort of).
The process is hardly conducive to the creation of more culture. Look at the music industry, where this process has advanced the most: has any really good music been published on a wide scale lately? No? Then lets get rid of the institution that no longer fulfill its purpose.
I have a right to my culture. You have a right to your fan fiction, to your culture.
very simple case (Score:3, Insightful)
So, the premise of the lawsuit is flawed, and will most likely fail. ironically, the effect is exactly opposite to the seemingly intended result - stopping the book. Rowling's dogs have given a bunch of free press for the effort and the book will have much better sales as a result.
Balance.
Cliff Notes (Score:3, Insightful)