Copyright idiocy

The publishers and author of the Harry Potter books are suing for copyright violation by a book form of the Harry Potter Lexicon http://www.hp-lexicon.org/ by Mr. Vander Ark.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120847059496924513.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/film/news/e3ic5e17e9271fcb92ac43fafb4fddf4cef
http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,2273592,00.html

In http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hIGNIcztySvpGhm95iGPhNL7ov1AD901VBQO0:
Rowling claims the printed work:
"Rowling claims the book is nothing more than a rearrangement of her own material and told the judge it copied so much of her work that it amounted to plagiarism.

"I think it's atrocious. I think it's sloppy. I think there's very little research," she testified Monday. "This book constitutes wholesale theft of 17 years of my hard work."

Now, mind you, this allegedly is a printed version of the Harry Potter Lexicon that appears online, which doesn't actually reproduce more than a few scattered lines of her text. (She claims that she thought the online lexicon was ok, which is why she gave it an award, until the site added the "Please do not copy material from any version of the Lexicon." In other words, she thinks he should let people freely post as their own work material from the Lexicon-- the actual full TEXT of the lexicon, while she can sue him for writing explanations of her naming conventions.

What's this about? Oh yes. She's supposed to be writing (and her publishers publishing) an encyclopedia of Harry Potter herself. She hasn't done it yet, but her publishers are afraid that some tiny little segment of the purchasing world will buy this book instead of the Encyclopedia written by Rowling, if there ever is one, and so affect the sales of the Rowling book.

Do the words "That's kinda silly" mean anything to you? Most Rowling fans will buy and read anything she writes now. Libraries, too, will be forced to buy the Encyclopedia, if it ever appears. Nor will sales of the original series be impacted by a guide to the series, as far as I can imagine.

You see, its the publishers who own Rowling's copyrights for the previous books. Rowling hasn't figured out yet (because she probably has a contract with her publishers that handles this) that if the right of the "owner of copyright" to "prepare derivative works" is interpreted in the way her publishers want it to be, some unlucky authors who have sold their work might well be in the situation of being sued by their own publishers for writing things considered 'derivative' of items that they themselves have written, and sold...

This is the fair use clause of the law:
Limitations on exclusive rights:

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include —

(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;

(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and

(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.