"In fact, Mr. Manjoo is arguing that the Harry Potter Lexicon (hereafter referred to as the HPL) is an example of fair use, and is consistent with existing copyright law, at least as it exists in the United States."

Granted. But neither he, nor you, are actually engaging with the problems the HPL is accused of having in the suit. The issue is not that fair use allows for a scholarly, reference, or commentary work to quote from a copyrighted source. That is understood. The question is whether the amount of quoting in the HPL falls within the bounds of legality or not.

How can you offer an opinion about that if you haven't studied both the HPL and the source text? You can't -- and part of the reason this matter has gotten as far as a suit is because neither the author nor the publisher would furnish a review copy of the manuscript when it was requested by the rightsholders.

It was also a factual error in FM's first article for him to imply that SVA and other contributors to the website ought to be able to profit from their work... in ignorance of the problem that SVA had never informed the other contributors of intent to publish.

(So why is FM championing SVA's right to profit from his hard work, instead of criticizing him for attempting to profit from the hard work of others? Because it's not relevant to the criticism FM is making against JKR? I disagree, I think it's quite relevant, because I don't think JKR was ignorant of the multi-contributor nature of the HPL website.)

"No, I'm not claiming the HPL is a work of parody. What I'm claiming is that it compiles information in a unique way, which is covered by copyright, and that it fairly uses the work of another author."

So... you're claiming this because you are familiar with both the HPL website's contents *and* with the HPL in manuscript form?

... No, of course you're not. Because you can't be; the publisher wouldn't even release the manuscript to the actual rightsholders for review without a court order -- a court order the issuing of which FM is decrying.

I am sorry to sound so picky when you have rightly taken anonymous posters to task for ad hominem viciousness. However, I'm afraid Mr. Manjoo DID open the gates to questions about Rowling's morality in his first post on the topic:

"But the question is not whether Rowling is on solid legal ground in suing her fans. It's whether she's on solid moral ground. And the answer, obviously, is no; indeed, considering how much her fans have done for her, her move is even more lamentable than Prince's recent promise to sue his supporters."

I know this was the comment that disturbed me the most; the same appears to have been true for several other commenters. I believe conjoining the legal and moral issues set a confusing tone for both posts -- but that may be because I don't find copyright law all that simple, either!

Since Salon offers the option of pseudonyms, I keep hoping it will decide to do away with "Anonymous" posts, which often seem to confuse nastiness with argument.

[continued from a prior letter in which I respond to an Anonymous poison pen...]

More to the point, nobody ever claimed that J.K. Rowling was not entitled to copyright protection. The dispute here is what constitutes fair use. The problem is that there is no such concept in the UK (although they are trying to pass their own version, dubbed "Fair Dealing"). You'll note, for instance, that in the UK, parodies are not legally protected free speech; a parodist needs permission from the party he is parodying. Not so in the US; the Supreme Court ruled that parody is an absolutely protected form of free speech, and no legal permission is required to publish a parody. No, I'm not claiming the HPL is a work of parody. What I'm claiming is that it compiles information in a unique way, which is covered by copyright, and that it fairly uses the work of another author. Moreover, it provides citations and references to the source material, so this is not simply a case of plagiarism. This is no different from a Biblical concordance or index.

Mr. Manjoo has rightly been taken to task for his ignorance of fandom, copyright law, fair use, and plain old logic. The graceful thing to do at this point is to acknowledge that the premise was ill-considered and to issue a heartfelt apology to Ms. Rowling for his misogyny disguised as a think piece.

Whoa, there, cowboy! How is Farhad Manjoo ignorant of fandom? Why is that even relevant to the discussion of copyright law? He's been spot on in his characterization of fair use, despite what the nay-sayers here would have you believe, and his logic, while not impeccable, is not fatally flawed. The Google indexing analogy isn't the best, but it's not as bad as some people are claiming.

But most of all, I'm deeply offended you'd jump to the conclusion that Farhad Manjoo is a sexist -- I mean, that's what you're claiming here. Misogyny? You're accusing Farhad Manjoo of hating women, for crying out loud. Don't you think that's a bit over the top? Is it perhaps possible that you're engaging in a bit of racism here because of the article's author's name? I certainly can't know this to be true, but it seems suspicious that I find no other possible motivation to accuse someone of something for which I find no evidence in his writing.

Oh, and speaking of libel, what you've done here again comes very close to libel, something you have no problem accusing Mr. Manjoo of. Though you are clearly expressing an opinion, you don't explicitly state that it's an opinion -- you state this as fact. Maybe the person who should be apologizing here is you.

The heaping amounts of scorn hurled at the author of this article, Farhad Manjoo, are truly shocking to me. No surprise, however, that most of the worst invective is cloaked under the name Anonymous.

I was so stunned by an anonymously posted comment titled "Two Additional Points" that I just had to speak out.

Most of the posts have already done a very credible job of eviscerating the central thesis of the article[...]

In point of fact, most of the comments that have been left here are not very credible attacks on Mr. Manjoo's articles, either the first or this follow-up article. They are, however, shocking attacks on Mr. Manjoo himself.

That is such a blindingly obvious point that I am astounded that Mr. Manjoo even considered advancing it as a serious argument in favor of suspending copyright law.

This, boys and girls, is what is called a logical fallacy. This particular type of fallacy is called a straw man argument. This is because Mr. Manjoo never once argued in favor of suspending copyright law. In fact, Mr. Manjoo is arguing that the Harry Potter Lexicon (hereafter referred to as the HPL) is an example of fair use, and is consistent with existing copyright law, at least as it exists in the United States. (There is no "fair use" in the copyright law of the UK, which is in my opinion a deficit of UK law. There are moves afoot to change this.)

Neither parent nor child is going to know or care about whether this is an authorized work.

And especially in the US, nobody should care whether a book is "authorized" or not. In fact, most of the best scholarly indexes and compendia out there are not authorized. (Then again, many of the indexes and compendia out there pertain to works written by people who are long dead.)

The HP Lexicon will impact sales of Rowling's own work. This is a practical certainty.

Based on the context of this sentence, it's clear that you're making the assumption that the impact will be negative. However, I believe the opposite is likely -- that is, I am convinced the impact on sales of Rowling's fiction will be positive.

That alone should be reason enough for her to stop its publication, even if the precepts of the Berne Convention did not exist.

It's interesting how you cite a law that was influenced by a French concept of "rights of the author" as opposed to copyright, which is a more Anglo-Saxon legal concept which focuses on the economic part of the equation. The Berne convention seeks to harmonize copyright laws among member countries, so that copyright in one country is respected in another. It's no secret that there are portions of US copyright law that aren't in alignment with the Berne Convention. But not all member nations have accepted all aspects of the convention, so that's not a unique situation for the US. The Berne convention establishes minimum copyright durations, though it allows member states to set longer ones. But it's not clear to me in the context of this discussion why you specifically mention the Berne Convention, or what precepts are supposedly being ignored.

That he feels comfortable sneering at an author whose success far surpasses his for exercising her own intellectual property rights is unseemly at best, pathetic at worst.

Who's sneering here? This is, dare I say it, hewing dangerously close to libel against Farhad Manjoo. The tone of both Salon articles was in all ways respectful and thoughtful, not condemnatory, and certainly not sneering. Perhaps a dictionary or thesaurus would help you pick a better word?

Finally, I find that the article has a resentful tone suffused with ad hominem. A woman creates a work that is so beloved, the sales make her wealthy. Because she is rich, Mr. Manjoo appears to feel that she is no longer entitled to the protections of copyright law. He libels her as greedy and immoral.

Oddly enough, I'd say that the only ad hominem attacks I've seen are the comments left anonymously by people like you. You mischaracterize copyright law, and you yourself libel Mr. Manjoo. I should also point out that nowhere does he use the word "immoral." He does accuse her of being greedy, and I think Rowling's behavior might be viewed that way by other reasonable people. One commenter claims that Rowling is going to donate proceeds from her own Potter encyclopedia to charity; maybe that's true, maybe that's not. The cynic in me wonders if this revelation came before or after the dispute over the HPL.

[To be continued...]