Harry Potter Sites vs. Warner Brothers

Kinchie writes "Now that Warner Brothers (read clueless Muggles) owns Harry Potter body, soul, and Nimbus 2001, they have begun an all out litigious onslaught against fan sites; check the ZDNET story here. Great public relations move guys. I sure hope that you can manage to intimidate a few hundred children and children-at-heart. Falstaff was right about lawyers."

Comments

Harry Potter & The Origins of the WWW?

[Jim Tyre]

WIPO recently decided a domain name dispute in favor of Time Warner and against someone who had registered a bunch of Harry Potter domain names. Unexceptional, since the proceeding was uncontested, but the decision casts possible new light on the origins of the WWW:

"This case is an interesting one from the perspective of the history of the Internet and the rumors associated with its creation. Stories have circulated that the inspiration for the Internet was the Owl Post system employed by wizards and students of wizardry in the Wizarding World. The system is often referred to as "The Way of the Wizarding World" (sometimes abbreviated in treatises of magic as "the three w's or "www"), and it is indeed the warp and woof of all wizard-to-wizard communication. In this system, a network of owls is employed to transmit information reliably and quickly. Indeed, some have claimed that the surname of the late, revered Father of ICANN, Jonathan B. Postel, is a Slavic derivation of the Romanian word for Owl Post. Thus, we approach our work in this case with especial seriousness."

Neither Tim Berners-Lee nor any recent Presidential candidate could be reached for comment.

My take

[Masem]

It's between the lines here, and there's a better story at CNN on this, but basically, some company registered about 120 variations of Harry Potter domain, nearly all dated shortly after WB announced the HP movie in March. WB took them to WIPO; the opponent never responded or showed up, so WB took control pretty much by default, as the move was most likely for cybersquatting.

Probably at a time before this action, they tried to contact that person, in addition to every other site that had Harry Potter-isms domain names, with the same form letter: posible violation of WB's trademark name. As the ZDnet article states, WB can't tell at the time if the person is a true fan or a cybersquatter and they have to defend their trademark or lose it.

I know people that have dealt with WB before in fan sites verses copyright and generally WB is pretty good. I think, however, in those cases the amount of money that was involved was pittence to Harry Potter. I expect it to rack up money in the BILLIONS, and WB has a strong financial interest to make sure that squatters aren't ripping them off. I do see that WB is trying to make some concessions, particularly if they harm too many fan sites they are going to disenfrantize their primary audience.

But overall, I think this is a problem of slash-and-burn trademark/domain arbitration. With one major cybersquatter apparently ruining it for the rest. ().

Yes, there is the one case of copyright infringement, but this is actually not surprising; I'd think that if you had a signficiant number of images from books, you'd be looking at a C&D. Typical with other studios as well, but these are things that studios should be able to work out with fans.

Re:My take

[rocur]

Nice theory, but the reality seems to be a little harsher: Check out this article (and the related ones) at The Register . Seems more like WB is going after anyone who even comes close to their "property". The Register also reported that when the studio is asked by the operator what domain name can be used, it replies that it can be anything that doesn't refer to Harry Potter or the books -- leading The Register to comment: "What the hell are you supposed to call a Harry Potter fan site, and how would anyone find it?"

Re:My take

[Masem]

While I still think it's too agressive of WB here, I do think the Register is missing the point, since a domain name should not be the end-all of a web site. They say nothing about naming the site, just the domain name (which current legalities place well into trademark areas) while there's plenty of ways to find anything you want on the web. Remember, domain names were never meant to be a way to locate sites and the original intent was for domain names to be transparent to average users when the web was introduced.

But yes, WB needs to learn to negotiate, particularly when the person they're threatening is their target audience.

anybody...?

[ubernostrum]

Anybody out there actually named Harry Potter and wants to cease-and-desist Warner Bros.? Or better yet, get somebody named Warner in there too and file class-action suit to reclaimthe names - Potter, Warner, et al vs. Time Warner...what a beautiful image that would be.

This is another example of the rot.

[www.sorehands.com]

This is just another example of a large corporation using threats and intimidation to control what is said.

It's actually proper use of a trademark to talk about a specific company or product.

If I start a site that has a trademark in it to talk about the trademarked product or service, isn't that properly identifying that service? That of course is assuming that you are not trying to pass your site/product off as the protected product.

Re:Well, don't you love gratitude...

[Zachary Kessin]

Well from what I read on CNN a number of the domains were things like "harrypottermovie.com" and were not infact fan sights but just a registered domain name to get money out of WB. There was no fan site here just a blank page.

Quite frankly WB is in the right here. This is not fair use its cybersquating.

The cure of the ills of Democracy is more Democracy.

Well, don't you love gratitude...

[Kasreyn]

...you'd think these guys would realize fan sites are FREE ADVERTISING FOR THEIR PRODUCT.

Concept: Someone hears of Harry Potter by hearsay. Is interested to learn more. Hops on Yahoo and searches, finds Official Site, little useful info except how to buy it. Finds fan site instead. Pages and pages of gushing praise for Harry Potter. Decides to buy it.

Where's the problem?

(Yeah yeah, I see THEIR problem, with the trademarks and all... "If they're using our TM they must be making money off it somehow! No one does anything except for money! WE sure don't!")

It seems very simple to me. In the corporate mentality, the perfect world would be one where anyone who says, thinks, reads, hears, uses, or sees their trademark/copyright/patent/(insert other no-fair-use-allowed word here) has to pay them a dollar per instance. Otherwise their intellectual property is being "stolen".

I move for all people who have a demonstrated lack of intellect to be stripped of their "intellectual property". Who's with me?? =P

-Kasreyn

P.S. I'm in a bad mood tonight, excuse harsh language of post. ;-)