Spoilers, Authorial intention and Copyrights

[pegkerr]

I've been thinking about this stuff all week, since the spoilers started coming out. I'd done a lot of thinking about this in advance, since I got spoiled on the last book, and I was determined not to get spoiled on this one.

There are several issues here which need to be separated: spoilers and copyright violation. I haven't commented much on this directly, because I didn't want to start mudslinging, but behind the scenes, I've experienced the abrupt ending of a friendship with a long-time reader on my friends list over these issues.

I had expected trolls to come out with spoilers, and I'd taken steps to protect myself. I'd already worked through the emotional stuff on this when I got spoiled on the last book. ("Those meanies! How dare they!") Yes, yes, we've all heard about this. I'd expected all this, and it all played out pretty much as I anticipated. On the other hand . . .

Call me naive (I know that minnehaha B. will), but I really did not anticipate that the entire book would be leaked and people would be reading it--and posting scans of it--onto the internet days before the official release date. Someone on my friends list posted a link to the scan. I protested to her, and she replied, entirely reasonably from her point of view, that she was putting it behind a cut-tag so no one would get spoiled who didn't want to be, and she didn't think that she was doing anything wrong. As long as she protects people from being spoiled, what possible objection could I have to her getting a jump on the book? I could hardly believe that she would say this to me, a holder of copyrights myself.

I couldn't make her understand my objection at all. We went back and forth a bit, neither of us budging, and she finally said that she was sorry that our friendship would end over this, and she would delete the entry because it upset me so much.

Which was a total lie. The entry is still there. She has just locked it so that I can't see it, but I am absolutely sure that others can. (When I tried to reply to her again, I get the message "You are not authorized to view this protected entry" rather than "No such entry exists.")

So here's my objection again: I am a published writer. I hold copyrights which say that I have the right to decide to do what I wish with work that I have created. If someone else other than the author assists in disseminating a copyrighted work in electronic form, a work in a form to which he or she has no legal right, in advance of the publication date, against the clearly expressed wishes of the author and in violation of that author's legal copyright that is wrong, wrong, wrong.

I know that I'm naive, perhaps, for wanting to have the experience that Rowling intended: that all over the world, we would be reading the story for the first time and experiencing it as a surprise together. Maybe it's because, since I'm an author, I give extra weight to authorial intention. I thought Rowling's intention was so extremely cool: the world coming together for one magical night, discovering the ending for this marvelous story, and nobody spoiling it for anyone else. That would be a remarkable world event, something never seen before. And we had waited so many years for this night to come! So yeah, I feel a little bitter toward those who are reading the story ahead of when Rowling intended, that they are cheating somehow. [Edited to add: And I do know that it includes some here on my friends list. I'm disappointed in you, but I won't defriend you over it. I'll just point out that you failed to choose what was right over what was easy.)

But I don't feel nearly as bitter toward them as I do toward the people who blew the book open ahead of time. The spoiler trolls are scum, but the others who made it possible to publish spoilers by disseminating the scan are contemptible, too.

They have no right.

Comments

[moony]

This is hypocritical of me, because I did read the scans, but I agree with you. I had my reasons for reading ahead of time, half of them to do with my health and the other half to do with my mental health. I don't really feel comfortable going into it here, but if you need to know why someone might 'cheat,' feel free to email me and I'll explain (and I won't spoil you).

That said, I'm off to Boston to join in the festivities at Harvard Square, now temporarily Hogwarts Square. I'm dressed as Bellatrix Lestrange, and I'll be lining up and buying the book at midnight and reading it all over again, properly. Nothing's been ruined for me in the experience at all, and honestly? I'll actually enjoy the experience more.

I am, however, sorry that someone was so unscrupulous as to leak the book early, providing spoilers and temptation. I sort of wish someone hadn't made it so easy for me to cave, but at the same time I don't regret caving. It's complicated. *sigh*

Just don't hate me, Peg. :(

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

I added this to my original post:

Edited to add: And I do know that it includes some here on my friends list. I'm disappointed in you, but I won't defriend you over it.

I'll just point out that you failed to choose what was right over what was easy.

[moony]

Well, I'm sorry you're disappointed, but it's a selfish thing, being a fan, and some people are better equipped for this sort of anticipation than others. I don't think I "failed" to do anything. All I did was read the book early because I am not someone who handles this kind of thing well. Not now, not at this point in my life, and not when every day is a craps shoot on whether I'm going to be able to even get out of bed in the morning.

But reading the book early did not affect my plans for the release at all. I'm still buying the book, so my own tiny niche of the sales hasn't changed. I'm still planning to queue up. I'm still hanging out with other like-minded folk. I've taken extreme care not to spoil anyone on my flist. If this all still somehow makes me a "failure" then I guess I'm just a "failure." There are a lot of us "failures" out there, though, so I don't feel alone or ashamed of myself. I feel fine.

And I have to go. I have a book to buy.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

I don't hate you. I still love ya, Moony, and I'll be eager to compare notes and opinions. when we both have finished it.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

And I'll e-mail you later today as you suggest.

[penmage.livejournal.com]

I'm with you completely. I have had no less that three friends in real life press the scanned pages on me, not to mention the online people, and just, no. I want to read it. I want to find out what happens. But I respect Rowling enough to also want to do it her way.

I won't even be able to read it until Saturday night, because as an Orthodox Jew, I can't open packages until aftet shabbat ends. But I don't care. I want to do it right, with the book in my hands and the pages under my fingers. I can wait until Saturday.

[liadan-m.livejournal.com]

Posting the entire book online without authorial permission is clear copyright infringement, since I'm pretty sure that Rowling isn't using a CC licence. It isn't "fair use" or anything else protected under either UK or US law, and is, in fact, illegal. Spoilers, hell. Rowling needs to have her lawyers get on the ball or she could loose her trademark because she didn't defend it.

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

Scholastics lawyers are all over it -- (see: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/18/us/18potter.html?_r=1&oref=slogin) -- they're actively looking for the identity of the person who posted the jpgs of the pages and telling sites to take down the links. They've also announced they intend to sue the place that reputedly shipped the book early.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

As I mentioned in a comment to another post, the camera model and serial number appear to be in the EXIF data of the images posted (I'm not sure there aren't multiple sets, so make that "the one set I checked"). This should make things considerably easier for Scholastic's lawyers :-). And is a really basic dumb-ass mistake.

Also he did a bad job taking the pictures; he should have selected manual exposure and fiddled until he got a good readable image and then gone with that, instead of just leaving it in auto. (Speaking here as somebody who has photographed one magazine serial and one hardcover book that I didn't want to subject to the strain of going onto a flatbed scanner.)

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

Wow, that is a bonehead mistake... Not being a HP fan, I had no inclination to go check out the file, but I had seen commentary around the web that they weren't very good shots of pages: focus and exposure problems. Wonder if the fool even used a tripod...

[cedarlibrarian.livejournal.com]

They've also announced they intend to sue the place that reputedly shipped the book early.

If my observations are correct, they won't get anywhere by suing the people that shipped the book early.

If you look at the picture of the book, there are two very telling details. First, there's a plastic cover over the book jacket. Second, on the bottom left corner of the book there is a piece of striated tape holding the plastic-covered book jacket onto the book. There's only one place I know of that would have a book shipped to them with a plastic cover and striated tape on it: a library.

So if I'm right, the place that shipped the book early was either Baker & Taylor, Ingram, or Book Wholesalers, Inc. (BWI). Thing is, Ingram, B&T, and BWI were supposed to ship early. If they didn't there'd be no way libraries could process their books and have them ready for their patrons by midnight on Saturday. Scholastic wouldn't get anywhere suing these particular distributors because they did exactly what they were supposed to do. Who they could sue would be the library that let their copies out of security long enough for someone to photograph the whole thing. Libraries had to sign an agreement with their distributor(s) that said the books would be locked up, and that only the director and one other person would even touch the books, and that no one would read them while cataloging. I don't know about Ingram and BWI, but the libraries I work with who use B&T had to have that agreement in sometime around March 10. The library that let the book out could be sued by Scholastic AND B&T/Ingram/BWI.

Or I could be totally wrong.

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

You may well be right about where the photographed book came from -- I didn't look at it myself. But the suing of the early shipper is a separate situation from the photographs of the book on the web: a bookseller (I don't remember who) shipped out copies of the book to people who had ordered it several days early -- which violates the agreement Scholarship made everyone sign. So Scholastic is after them purely for shipping early -- has nothing to do the 'scanned' book.

[cedarlibrarian.livejournal.com]

Ack, my bad. Yes, they should and will go after Deep Discount. Morons (DD, not Scholastic). Did they not see the huge red letters on the box that said, "Do not open until July 21?"

[magentamn.livejournal.com]

I've worked in both libraries and bookstores. Some bookstores put mylar covers on all their hardcovers, or all worth over X, or whatever they decide. Having a mylar cover does NOT mean it was from a library. Besides, some libraries have books shipped uncovered, and put on mylar covers as part of processing, to make spine labeling easier.

So it could be either a bookstore or library person who leaked. Or both; it seems like it might have been multiple.

I am pissed about this myself. I don't want spoilers, and I certainly think heads should roll for putting it online. Even once it's released, that is clear violation of copyright.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Well, for that matter, many of my hardcovers have mylar jacket covers on them; I buy them at Dreamhaven and put them on as needed. Now and then a new book comes already covered.

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

>Thing is, Ingram, B&T, and BWI were supposed to ship early. If they didn't there'd be no way libraries could process their books and have them ready for their patrons by midnight on Saturday.

Yup. I'm not sure where exactly my father's library got the book from, but they've had their copies for _weeks_ for exactly the reason you state. (I figured they'd get them early, but I was surprised by how early.)

(My father sent an email to the entire staff telling them not to bug the tech services folks about it. What the tech services folks did once they had the book in hand, I do not know.)

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

Oops. Jumped the gun on that comment and didn't realize who I was replying to. Sorry 'bout the saying things you already knew.

[moony]

Oh, and that 'friend' who posted the book on her LJ, uh. Way to violate US law there, ace. The only reason the scans are still out there is because they're floating around on foreign servers, where copyright law is fuzzy at best.

I may have read the scans but I'm not about to host them.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

The ones I've seen were available via BitTorrent, i.e. they're not hosted any single place.

[sternel.livejournal.com]

Well stated. May I point people to this post?

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Please do.

[kokopoko.livejournal.com]

Someone that got the book early due to deepdiscounts.com shipping it too early took pictures of every page and posted it online. The fault lies with deepdiscounts.com and the person that took the pictures. Also with the NY Times and any other newspaper that reviewed the book and published spoilers before the release date.

I read the scanned book. I'm not stealing because I'm buying the book tonight and rereading it. I stood in line at 9am for my wristband. I didn't pass the links to anyone and have spoiled no one including my daughter. I don't think I've done anything wrong.

[moony]

Word.

I've stolen nothing, because Rowling is not only getting money from me for the US release but the UK release as well. I'm constantly pouring money into that woman's pocket. I'm not hosting the scans nor am I passing them around, I'm just a slob with an internet connection.

I didn't ruin my experience in the slightest, and isn't that what matters most? Not the fandom experience as a whole, because if you think about it, people in England get the book first. The east coast of North America gets it before the west coast. Aussies have to wait until tomorrow. We're NOT getting the book all at once, after all.

What matters is that we're getting the book. Period. We're reading it. And in a week, we'll all be talking about it. I hope the people who leaked the book get what's coming to them, but I think it's unfair to point fingers at people who elected to read it early. I laboured over that decision. I did not make it lightly.

And I don't regret it.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Illegal, clearly yes. Wrong, by my standards, no, I agree. No harm, no foul, and you've listed the two sources of harm you might have caused (financial to Rowling and spoilering people who don't want to be) and denied doing either, so no harm.

I take photos and write software, my wife and many friends (including Peg of course) write and publish fiction; copyright is pretty basic to my income and that of much of my social circle. But I'm still not happy about the use of copyright to make a work *unavailable*, or for that matter the extension of copyright far beyond the author's lifetime (I can see arguments for life+25, maybe; it solves some other problems, and might be the best compromise, but it's still too long). Intellectual property isn't real property, and equating copyright violation to theft is stretching the analogy beyond the elastic limits.

[kerri]

I completely agree, and when this was happening, I have to admit I thought of you, because you got to watch this happen, and I was pretty sure that it would have more personal meaning to you, given the fact that you have books of your own.

It makes me sad that this happens, but I have to admit, what makes me sadder is that people don't recognise that in reading the scanned book, they did do something wrong, because they supported the people who violated the copyright. Yeah, it's a tenuous moral issue, because most of those people are going to buy the book, but still.

Anyway, I hope this doesn't completely ruin your experience tonight. *snugs*

[ame-chan.livejournal.com]

No, I agree with you.

Spoiling something on purpose is a crappy thing to do to people and I think the people doing it are really drumming up some unpleasant karma for themselves. Accidentally, not so great, but accidents happen and I think most friendships can stand up to accidents.

To violate someone's copyright by publishing a book in entirety (or linking to that book so others can read it) UNLESS it's got one of those open license things where it's OK, is stealing money from the author. It's STEALING. And wrong. And I think that's even more unpleasant karma.

I used to be ok with downloading music from free sharing sites until I sat down and thought about why I thought books were different. I realized, they're not different. If I feel that way about books, I have to pay for hte music too. So now, I always buy from iTunes or get the CD, for the same reason. UNLESS the music is put up for free by the artist themselves, for download.

I guess I'm saying, you're right. It's not just spoilage. It's stealing. And it's wrong.

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

For the record, I didn't read the online scans and I'm not going to buy the book; not a Potter fan. However, I don't think that Rowling's intention about how people ought to read the book has, or should have, any moral or legal force.

The purpose of copyright law is to encourage authors to profit from (and thus share) their works, not to enforce authorial intent. People who have read the scans have not supported Rowling's wishes for the reading experience, but that doesn't mean what they've done is morally wrong, assuming they then go on and buy. If I wrote a book and asked that nobody read it except on Saturdays, you'd agree that that was unreasonable; would you also agree that readers do nothing wrong in ignoring that wish? How, except in degree, does that differ?

IMHO the polite thing to do is to have the Potter parties and read the books then. However, somebody who reads the scans and then immediately buys the books has done Rowlings no wrong. The only thing they have done, it seems to me, is to omit "courtesy, at least, to living authors".

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

I should add that people who *posted* the scans are both morally and legally wrong.

[weaselmom.livejournal.com]

I understand and agree about the whole "communal experience" thing. To me, there is something very special about the idea that millions of people are engaged in the same activity at the same time with the same goal: sharing the last adventure of some characters who have been part of our culture for the last several years, and seeing how their story ends. I remember flying back from Chicago the day after one of the books came out (3, I think) and walking down the airplane aisle and seeing the majority of travelers with their heads down over the same distinctive book. It was the quietest flight I have ever been on. I won't judge people who just couldn't wait, but I don't understand it at all. (Perhaps I have no room to talk about lack of any sort of self-discipline, who can't resist eating a bag of licorice in one sitting.)

Good thing they're releasing the book on a Friday night. Can you imagine the massive productivity loss if it had been released on, say, Thursday?

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

By the way, I wish you a very, very happy Potterdammerung.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

http://machinist.salon.com/blog/2007/07/18/potter_leak/

http://www.crn.com.au/story.aspx?CIID=86846&src=site-marq

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/07/new_harry_potte.html

All links safe to read.

B

[lindelea1.livejournal.com]

Wow. Call me naive, too. I mean, I knew that speculative sites were up, with people claiming to know the ending to the last book, but I never took them seriously, just thought they were blowing hot air.

To hear that the entire book has been ripped off and posted publicly, well, I feel for the author.

[jbru.livejournal.com]

I think you are correct that there are separate issues here that need addressing and it is difficult to avoid conflating them

Copyright violation: Scanning the complete work and putting it on the net is a crime and is morally repugnant. Mind you, in this digital age, there are some grey areas and shifting sensibilities about these things. I have, for example, purchased music from bands that I was first exposed to through illegal downloads. I've seen movies in the theater after seeing pirated copies elsewhere. So while I agree that it is a crime to create and disseminate pirated works in violation of copyright, I am not so quick to condemn those that hear, see or read such pirated works. I think the original creators stand to gain at least as much as they might lose in most cases.

Spoilers: I don't really understand spoilers. A surprise is a surprise to me no matter how it is that I hear it. If I'm planning to see a movie, for example, I am not dissuaded from seeing that movie because I happen to hear other people talking about it at a party. My experience of the movie may be different, but it won't be quantitatively better or worse, just different. Many times I end up enjoying a movie after I've heard "spoilers" because I get to watch the filmmaker's work as a technical exercise as well as a dramatic one. I get to see the hints dropped and how pipe layed in early acts is paid off on in later ones. It makes the experience much like re-reading a book I've enjoyed. I respect, however, that not everyone feels the way I do.

Authorial Intention: I think you've gone a bit off the deep end on this one, Peg. If Rowling really wanted everyone to experience the last book at the same time, she should have booked a pay-per-view satellite event and read the manuscript to her audience. As soon as she commited pen to paper that intention was diluted. Certainly she had first readers, editors, copy editors, typesetters, printers and any number of other people along the line experience the book (in whatever bits and pieces they might get) at different times. Further, those that don't read the book the first night (like one of your commenters who is Jewish) aren't going to have any less fun reading it than those that read it for the first time years from now. So, yeah, it would be wonderful and magical if the whole world sat down and read the same book at the same time but that's the kind of thing that only happens in stories. Is anyone going to remember, much less care, that a few people out of the millions of readers read this book a few days early? I don't think they'll care next week, much less next year or 10 years from now.

On another tack of authorial intention, I think that the only thing an author can do with intention is to try to guide the feelings of a single reader from first page to last. The author's skill with words communicates meaning and emotion as the reader absorbs what has been written. If the author is lucky, the reader gets those things clearly and the communication is complete. Far too often, even that fails and the reader takes something from the work that the author never intended. Try to magnify that across millions of readers and you're bound to fail. (And that's not even taking into account strange people like erickavan who often read books in a non-linear fashion!)