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."
well that's funny (Score:5, Interesting)
"This is such a great site...my natural home." - JK Rowling
I assume this is a lawyer thing
Re:well that's funny (Score:5, Informative)
I take no pleasure in the fact that publication has been prevented for the present. On the contrary, I feel massively disappointed that this matter had to come to court at all. Despite repeated requests, the publishers have refused to even countenance making any changes to the book to ensure that it does not infringe my rights. (source [jkrowling.com]
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.
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*Some would say Harry Potter is not the best example of culture.
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Not saying I think they're worth reading, just saying that's a really stupid reason not to.
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.
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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
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Re:well that's funny (Score:5, Insightful)
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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.
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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
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What she plans to do with her money (charity, hookers, whatever) doesn't make a bit of d
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Copyright gives authors certain rights with respect to works they've already created, not ones they're just thinking about or may create in the future. If she was planning to do a similar book, that explains her motivation, but has no bearing on wheth
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I just wanted to point out that she is writing an encyclopedia the profits from the sale will go to her charity, I believe she has also said if she wins the case the profits from the court case will also go to her charity.
- Does that mean all gross profits, net profits (how does she and her publishers define net profit) will go to charity?
- 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
Re: suing for charity... (Score:5, Insightful)
Consider this a learning experience.
Re:well that's funny (Score:4, Insightful)
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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
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"This is such a great site...my natural home." - JK Rowling
Out of creative juice.. become an IP vulture. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Out of creative juice.. become an IP vulture. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Out of creative juice.. become an IP vulture. (Score:5, Interesting)
I support the idea of having a lexicon/wiki/whatever. But going out and trying to sell the information that is inside the books is taking it too far.
If you wrote a book, would you want someone taking all the facts out of your book and publishing it for their own profit? This isn't fair use here. If these people wanted to make the sparknotes of Harry Potter, helping the reader understand the books, that is fine. The writer of the notes isn't taking away any money from the author and is adding their own content. This is literally taking every fact out of all 7 books and publishing them for a profit, and not sharing that money with the author.
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Hence why I said it's not like she is hardly making any money from her work. She, her children, her children's children, her children's children's children, etc, etc are set for life. None of her familey will ever have to work for at least 500 years maybe longer on that money.
So why go for the jugula
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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...
Seriously? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Out of creative juice.. become an IP vulture. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Capisce?
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Actually, he's just the person to say. You see, copyright is a bargain between the government - in the name of the people - and the author. In any other case, for example if the government would aquire toilet seats for billions of pounds, the people would be rightly outraged at both the government and at the company selling the toilet seats for bill
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It doesn't make sense since she wouldn't benefit from taking them down and would actually effect her negatively from all the publicity.
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It's the wrong question to ask because it implies she's being immoral for profiting. The correct question is, why alienate your fans? This merely implies that she's being shortsighted (or even stupid).
Also, once again, let me point out that she's not trying to "take down" the site. She contributes to the site. But she does not want them to make money by publishing a book.
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The only reason she is putting up this lawsuit is because she wants to re-package the wiki herself which is probably why she was contributing to it in the first place.
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These people are her fans so going after them only makes her look bad. Why bother?
Re:Out of creative juice.. become an IP vulture. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Out of creative juice.. become an IP vulture. (Score:5, Funny)
Well, technically she is, but British cuisine has always been rather peculiar.
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Them's the breaks when you create something that enters the popular culture. Do you believe that third-parties shouldn't be allowed to sell "unauthorised" software for Windows because that would be preventing Microsoft from making a profit from all the hard work they did creating Windows? If so, then fine; I disagree, but at least you have a consistent position. If you disagree with that, then how is this different?
The content on the Lexicon seems to have taken a lot of time, effort and attention to detai
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Microsoft releases APIs and so forth allowing other entities to produce software: It is explicitly allowed because it adds value.
Rowling explicitly allowed these folks to add value with their fan work. She does not explicitly allow them to make a profit by selling books.
The only "point" in your post is that she would be a lot smarter to try other options. This is correct. But nowhere do you state a case that she is legally or morally obli
Re:Out of creative juice.. become an IP vulture. (Score:5, Informative)
No, you are not. This is a common misconception. It applies, if at all, only to trademarks ("Kleenex". "Xerox"), not copyright (this case).
Re:Out of creative juice.. become an IP vulture. (Score:5, Informative)
The ultimate lawyer-keep-away strategy? (Score:5, Funny)
This will probably keep them busy for a while!
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<Harry:> Wow, Hernione, you fixed that for them!
:P
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1. Take the
2. Load the data into a spreadsheet
3. Export it as a CSV
4. Open it in notepad and remove all the commas and end of line characters
5. Print it
The printed copy of the data was what would be given to the other parties lawyers.
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She has failed in legal action before (Score:3, Informative)
Wow (Score:5, Funny)
the lexicon contains mostly factual information
And all this time I thought it was a work of fiction. You mean magic is real!?!?
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What do you mean real? If real is what you can feel, smell, taste and see, then "real" is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.
The article claims this happens more often (Score:5, Interesting)
Other popular universes might be Star Wars, Star Trek, the Discworld etc etc. How many of these have books published that are NOT sanctioned by the original copyright holder?
All those Star Trek tech manuals, or star wars art books, or the discworld science books are ALL published with the blessing of Paramount, Lucasfilm and Terry Pratchet. (The ones I got at least)
So are there any books out there that do something similar that were NOT officially sanctioned. I am not talking about parodies like Star Wrecked, these fall under different laws.
Movies spawn novells, these also seem to be often written with the blessing of the studio.
So where is the evidence that this kinda of thing is common practice?
This site is NOT a synopsis or a review or even a discussion site. It is clearly a product designed to work of the original content by extending it. Selling it for money makes it clear they are profitting of someone elses work.
While some one slashdot favor a more lenient copyright system, I think even the most rabid filesharer usually is against people who pirate for profit.
There is a real issue here, who owns the rights to for instance a 3D model of an x-wing. Worse, who owns the rights to a picture of a light-saber. Does it become a Star Wars image because someone hold a sword of light OR does it have to have Jedi written all over it before it becomes a Star Wars image.
But as intresting a discussion as that is, it doesn't apply here. If you browse the site you can clearly see that this is a 100% ripoff of the original work that would have no value on its own. It doesn't fall under the rules for a biography, it is not parody. Fair use is about using a limited amount of someone elses work in your own work.
So how much of this site is their own work and how much that of the original author? I don't think it is a simple measurement, if I produce a detailed layout of the Enterprise, then the resulting blueprint may well be 99% my own work, but that 1% that makes it the enterprise also puts it firmly in the hands of Paramount. Without that 1% it wouldjust be a blueprint, it is their original work that makes it 'worth' something.
Look at it that way, would this site be worth anything without the original work. No, I don't think so.
So I think in this case the copyright/trademark? holder is correct. They tolerated the site because it wasn't commericial, but printing it is clearly designed to earn money. Sorry, but if you want to profit of someone elses original work to such a degree, you got to get their permission first.
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Are these James Bond books ABOUT or based ON (Score:2)
I think that is the key difference. I can write a book ABOUT Harry Potter and Rowling would have no case. This site is based ON her work, not ABOUT her work.
A book that shows you a made up layout of Q's lab (sorry not a James Bond fan so don't hang me if I get it wrong)n is different then a book that tells you about when the movies were made or talks about the people involved.
Lots of people have written a shit load of articles ABOUT Trek. Discussions of the women in spocks live, who would have been a good
Re:The article claims this happens more often (Score:5, Interesting)
Copyright is about the right to copy something. There are rules about fair use and how much copying versus original content is allowed. In this case, it would seem NO amount of copyrighted material was extracted and used, but rather statistics and facts about the series of works are being written.
And the question of "who owns the facts" has been up in the air for a while. Let's look at sports statistics and facts. The various parties in control of profiting from baseball, for example, have started lawsuits against publication of histories, stats, facts and figures related to baseball. "Who owns the facts" is a big deal.
Initially, I was thinking "not copyright -- it can't apply! they must be talking about trademark or some other intellectual property." This is not the case either. This is a [potentially] useful collection of information about the series.
And to pick another slashdot favorite parallel reference: The Church of Scientology often threatens and sues for copyright infringement for very similar activities. Often listing facts, histories and statistics about the CoS results in "copyright" related legal activity where the CoS is the plaintiff.
Who owns the facts?! How far can this "fact owning" notion go? Can people get sued by paramount for the creation and listing of the number of times that Spock says the word "Logic" or "Logical" for the purposes of a drinking game?
This is an important issue and it should really be put to the test and laid out clearly in precedent or law for it to be clear to everyone. "WHO OWNS THE FACTS?"
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And that would be bad because? Remember the 'work' in this case is just information!
This entire society wouldn't exist if copyright would have existed since ancient times. The creation of derivative works is the cornerstone of a healthy culture, since almost everything is a derivative work, just not always blatantly obvious.
If copyright would have gotten abolished in the early 20th century, we would be possibly not only cultu
writers, journalists, harry potter fans (Score:2, Interesting)
A professor should be able to publish an article interpreting the newest published literature.
A Harry Potter junkie should be able to write a book analyzing the lexicon in the novels.
It's a double standard; the journalist and professor are safe, but the Harry Potter fan gets sued.
Re:writers, journalists, harry potter fans (Score:5, Funny)
A journalist has a publisher standing behind them who can afford to buy lawyers.
A professor has a university with a law faculty standing behind them which makes lawyers.
A Harry Potter junkie has their significant other standing behind them wondering why on earth they spend their time writing all that stuff.
Disabling the right mouse click? (Score:2)
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From the source of that page:
So... we have a nine year old piece of JavaScript written by an AOL'er. No wonder it doesn't work with modern, standards-compliant web browsers.
Good (Score:2, Interesting)
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I've been making a little list of constitu
"imaginary property" (Score:5, Insightful)
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Rowling... (Score:2)
Stallman to the rescue... (Score:4, Informative)
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Right-click disablers are evil (Score:2, Funny)
Not Surprised (Score:2, Informative)
It's probably not about the money (Score:5, Interesting)
Her concerns tend to be around keeping Harry "pure" - that is retaining control over how everything around it is presented, rather than wringing every last penny out of it.
In this instance it will be about wanting a single authorative lexicon, rather than multiple competing ones, some of which will not fit her vision of things, meet the quality standards she wants or whatever.
I'm not saying that this is right/legal/good, just that claims of greed show little understanding about the individual they are being made against and are probably wrong.
Satire solves everything (Score:3, Funny)
Ego (Score:5, Funny)
See following quote: "In February 2007 Rowling issued a statement on her website about finishing the final book, in which she compared her mixed feelings of "mourning" and "incredible sense of achievement" to those expressed by Charles Dickens in the preface of the 1850 edition of David Copperfield, "a two-years' imaginative task." "To which," she added, "I can only sigh, try seventeen years, Charles..."" [usatoday.com]
I mean, wow. That's like me reading John Carmack's
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)
It's to late for Rowling to change her mind. (Score:3, Interesting)
Now all of a sudden she has decided it is a copyright violation. Apparently it wasn't yesterday, but today it is because the owners want to make money from it.
The intent of the owners does NOT change whether the site is a copyright violation. If it wasn't a violation yesterday, its not a violation today just because someone might make a penny.
Haven't you made enough fucking money off this crap anyway?
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~S
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Maybe fame and fortune changes the fundamental nature of a person, or maybe she was already that way and only mean-s
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I don't remember this, nor can I find any reference to it. Do you have a link?
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Re:she's right (Score:5, Interesting)
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Note, that in the beginning (post Napster but when when Kazaa was popular), I used to argue with RL friends that file sharing was theft. Then the RIAA started getting aggressive and I started hearing a lot of arguments in favour of DRM and harsh laws involving intellectual property. The pro-IP crowd has educated me quite a lot since then. I am now (pretty much) in favour of laws against DRM and the like. When it comes to IP, then let it be free. If you ha
Re:she's right (Score:4, Interesting)
One of the teachings in that book is this: Wealth is poison; it murders from within. Lucius Malfoy ("bad faith") killed himself with wealth before he embarked on his career as a Death Eater. Rowling has allowed herself to be turned into a corporate person -- such a "corpse" will never rest in peace.
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.
You!! (Score:5, Funny)
Like most present, you have never brought both subject and comment together...
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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.