Copyright idiocy

[bunnyjadwiga]

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.

Comments

[ladypeyton.livejournal.com]

An independant auditor went through the published lexicon and tallied up that 91% of the book is a direct copy of the Potter books. There's a pie chart anda bar chart that were entered into evidence that I'll try to find for you.

Also, SVA himself admitted during his testimony that he scanned in the books and cut and pasted them to create the Lexicon. The parts of the online Lexicon that he has used are not the original essay parts since they didn;t have permission to use them and they wanted to avoid copyright violation.

I've been following this issue since he first announced he was going to take the Lexicon offline into book form.

Also, JKR has stated, under oath (her testimony is available at the Leaky Cauldron), that it's not derivitave works that she objects to and mentioned several derivitave works that she considers to be excellent. It's the fact that this book is, for the most part, a C&P job that simply re-arranges her words into alphabetical order and when it *does* try to stray from her words it gets things wrong.

[pedropadrao.livejournal.com]

The way I see it, writing commentaries & concordances is one of the oldest acts of scholarship. The Mishnah, for instance, is a vast commentary on the legal bits of the Torah & on the then-extant cases of the Sanhedrin & lesser rabbinical courts. I don't see why a concrodance & commentary of Rowling's stories is somehow the same thing as violating her copyrights to her books, any more than the currently extant concordances & commentaries upon Tolkien's books are violations of his estate's copyrights to his books. I think the courts & Congress really need to rethink a number of aspects of copyright, including this one.

[anastasiav.livejournal.com]

I have to admit I'd never really imagined putting the words "Mary Kay, Inc." and "SCA" in the same sentence before. We do have a diverse membership, don't we.

One thing I'll add here - there is a legal requirement that the rights holder "vigorously defend" their assertion of rights. In the famous "Disney sues daycare" imbroglio (Disney sued some small daycare which had a huge, unauthorized mural of Disney characters on its wall), Disney lawyers pointed out (correctly, without a commentary on the law itself) that the law basically requires rights holders to make every effort to stop infringement wherever they find it if they don't want their rights to pass into the public domain as abandoned. They can ignore use that is "minor and inconsequential" but little else.

Rowling's tearful testimony aside, therefore, there is an argument to be made that the law as it stands more or less forced them to at least make the attempt to stop publication.

[lauradi7.livejournal.com]

There are LJ communities following the court transcripts word for word, and I've been convinced that Rowling is going to win.
The fact that the author of the Lexicon included in his publishing contract that the publisher wouldn't make him be responsible if they were sued for copyright infringement and the fact that he made a stink when someone copied parts of his web site onto Wikipedia makes me think he is a hypocrite and a sneak (which may not in fact be the same as a copyright infringer).
see for example:
http://praetorianguard.livejournal.com/

[iestynapmwg.livejournal.com]

Here's Neil's take on it...