Letters to the Editor
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Oh NO!
An author who has been exceedingly generous with her fans DARES to want to retain the rents on the intellectual property she developed. Someone call the Po-Lice, I think capatalism is at work.
Seriously, expecting someone to give away wholesale profits in their inventions is a bit much.
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Bullshit.
RDR wouldn't even give WB/JK Rowling a copy of the book so they could review it, so how do you know there's no infringement? The UK cover of the book used for promotion on Amazon was incredibly-- infringingly-- similar to the Harry Potter 'adult' covers used in the UK, without any notation indicating the book was unofficial. The publisher and Steve Van Der Ark have both behaved-- in my opinion-- quite horribly. J.K. Rowling has been more than generous to fans-- compare her behavior to Prince's!-- and for her generosity, she's getting some pretty terrible behavior.
Copyright law doesn't disappear the day you make a million dollars. If someone disagrees, they should write their congressman, not claim that Jo Rowling has no right to her own work.
My signature links to a blog that's been covering some of these legal issues very well.
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How is this greedy for JKR?
What this guy is doing violates the very concept of "fair use". He's trying to profit off of someone else's work. (And it is--much of the Lexicon as it currently exists has always relied primarily on quotes from the books. They've only recently started backpedaling on the concept that the print Lexicon would be just like the website, but I still don't buy that there's going to be a major difference.)
This is, to me, comparable to someone who would download a TV show off the internet, not for their own personal usage, but to burn to DVDs to sell on a street corner.
Haven't we all basically agreed that it is not okay to take someone else's content and then sell it for a profit without their permission? That there's a difference between the Chinese DVD pirates and a DVD owner who makes a copy for a family member?
If this was just commentary, they'd be okay. But the Lexicon itself is not just commentary. It's full of JKR's own material, which she has allowed them to use as long as they weren't doing so for cash. That, to me, was generous. That's what we want, the ability to use information for personal use without getting C&Ds... not the ability to buy a duplicator and start churning out copies of our CD collection to sell for five bucks apiece and pay the mortgage.
There's a big difference. This isn't just commentary on the HP world, it's a website full of information taken directly out of the books. To try to turn that into a profit-generating enterprise is expressly the reason why we can't abolish copyright law entirely... because some people always have to go and be assholes about it.
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Sorry, but no
She created the Potter universe, and it is hers to control. I think she was very generous in letting the fansite have as much latitude as it did.
The key point in your post, I think, was the part about the fans viewing Rowling as a rather amusing, and perhaps minor, player in their little universe. This is classic fandom. I have some experience with fandom like this. I once was part of a group that made a sci-fi related short film. It wasn't great, but it made the rounds at a few conventions. I was kind of amazed at how many people would see the film, approach me afterward, and then suddenly it was like they thought they were part of the inner circle; that we were somehow partners in the enterprise.
Not all of fandom is like that. In fact, fans helped us out a lot during the making of our film, and often went above and beyond what we could have expected. But there are those other kind of fans who need to have limits set for them clearly and early on because they will often not be able to tell the difference between something they created and something they have taken and internalized thus making it their own. The process can be one and the same to them.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to work on my Voldemort Vs. Buffy screenplay. I doubt either Rowling or Joss Whedon will mind in the slightest; after all, without me they would be just a couple of people typing away in a closet somewhere.
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shes in the right
JK Rowling has every right to stop another author making a profit off the universe she created -- thats how copyright has always worked. It would be a different story if she was opposed to the online (non-profit) version, but she is only striving to prevent someone (a GREEDY someone imo) from profiting off HER creation.
I wonder how the author of this blog would feel if I said I was going to publish a book sumarising all his blog entries, for my own personal profit. I bet he wouldn't be entirely thrilled about it.
Maybe if the authors of the HP compendium had asked and gotten permission BEFORE going ahead with a publishing deal, the response would have been different. Common courtesy would have been for them to have obtained permission from the living author before deciding to use her unique universe in order to make profit for themselves. This is a very different issue than that of nonprofit fanfiction posted on the net.
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Can I sell...
... Florida 'Gators T-shirts and jackets? It is a public university and I am a tax payer, so I am more-or-less a cooperative owner of the franchise. They would be happy to have me making people aware of the existence of their sports teams, wouldn' they? I could do it as a public service and make myself some cash as well.
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On the other hand...
Salon is a for-profit entity. How dare Farhad Manjoo even mention Harry Potter in an article? Doing so will only entice the public to read the subscriber-only site, allowing Salon to profit from the author's hard work.
JK Rowling worked for years to create the franchise and now Salon seeks to profit from it by mentioning Harry Potter in an article.
How dare they?
The only person who ever has the right to so much as mention Harry Potter in a way that might potentially generate revenue is Rowling herself.
No doubt lawsuits against major newspapers and magazines are coming soon.