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Rowling Sues Harry Potter Lexicon
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."
the whole franchise is not even 20 years old so it's normal she shoul dprotect her rights.
I hope she wins now, but not 60 years later, like Disney who doesn't want his earliest works to fall in the PD.
Smile, don't click...
I guess she's not satisfied with just being a billionaire. She needs to be a richer billionaire.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_female_billionaires
This author takes full ownership and responsibility for the unpopular opinions outlined above.
Seriously, who does this woman think she is? All she did was all the hard work in creating something. Who is she to profit from it?
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
Ok. So, how much money should I get to make off of my IP before I don't get to profit anymore?
Did the publishers of those books make a deal with the publishers of the Harry Potter books? Unless we're talking about those "fanfic" Chinese HP books, I'll bet they did.
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.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
I think we should use the phrase imaginary property much more often.
Money for nothing, pix for free
...which is also tax deductible.
I Wonder how different is RIAA, MPA and Mrs Rowling..Seems like money got into her head now
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.
You havent met many accountants have you.
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 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.
- 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.
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
I really have to agree with J.K. Rowling on this. The amount of money she made from the series is immaterial. Actions don't become morally right or wrong based on how much money you've made, unless you're a psychopath. The simple fact is, the person who wrote the lexicon wants to make money because it's easier to expand on an already popular work than it is to come up with an original mythos, make it popular, and then write a lexicon for it. If he wanted to undertake the project commercially, the appropriate path would have been to approach the author and publisher and pitch them the idea of a joint project. What he's doing is the equivalent of selling a product called Pepsi Snacks because it's easier to sell something if you associate it with an already popular product. If you just sold "Bob's Snacks", it doesn't have any immediate appeal. Yeah, what a bitch, all she does is write best-selling novels and give huge chunks of money to charity. That's just terrible. I bet there's a special layer of hell reserved for people like that.
Actually it is factual content; factual content about the series. It's not factual content about real life. You'd have to be a real Harry Potter nerd to get those two confused.
You also have to see the flipside of it.
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.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Consider this a learning experience.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
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...
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. . .
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
I'm an English prof. My shelves are full of books that regurgitate the facts of the books they address. They're called "reference works." A lot work goes into them, and they're often quite useful. Yet they can in no way replace the books they are about. Novels and such are textual works of art. Reference books are not. They are references to works of art, useful for study, which is what I'm guessing Rowling fanatics do with this info on Hairy Pooter. But those reference books, useful they may be, just aren't the thrill of reading the Real Thing(tm).
Only the words describing an idea can be copyrighted. So while it has been common courtesy to ask an author before you write novels set in his or her universe, it is not required by law. And this is rightly so, because the work lies in crafting the words, not in having the idea.
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)
The lexicon would be a work of research, i.e. cataloging spells, creating a timeline. That kind of work is explicitly protected in copyright law, while a story (ab)using the characters owned by her is not. It's just not the same thing, she's just bitter because her mistaken take on copyright law, like so many people, leads her to believe that she has complete control over everything with the words 'Harry Potter' on it.
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.
Hmm, who do I want to lose more, the idiot trying to quash fair use rights or the idiots with right click scripts and clickthrough licenses.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
From the Fair Use doctrine itself:
"...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.
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I disagree mainly because it is an unofficial guide. It is more like some of the unofficial guides to video games with the cheat codes and walkthroughs, Though the names and such are listed, it is a reference and not a case of plagiarism. It clearly requires the original works to be of value.
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".
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!
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Copyright applies to the work.
" 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.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Every single work written by arguably the greatest author in the English language (Shakespeare), just like every single work written by the arguably greatest author in the French language (Molière) heavily incorporated elements from previous authors well beyond the standard that we would call "copyright infringement" today. All modern scientific progress is built on the works of others. True human genius is cumulative.
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.
weirdest thing I ever saw: scientology advertising on slashdot.
Rowling and her lawyers don't "own" the harry potter universe. There is no legal vehicle for owning whole concepts - save patents which restrict the practice to specific claims. She has copyright and trademarks and other legal rights defined by states who have (until recently) the monopoly on military force to enforce it. Copyright does not apply here, unless she is pressing the fair use limits which on my read of the site, this is clearly within a reasonable legal scope. In no place have I seen diligent enforcement of trademarks on the content I read in the site, so I assume the book will not violate her trademarks.
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.
I wonder how Cliff Notes fall into this category. I'm sure they don't get approval for every book they summarize, analyze, quote, and review.
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs