JKR's suit against RDR Books

[pegkerr]

I'm really sorry to hear about all this. I certainly like the Harry Potter Lexicon, and I consider Steve Vander Ark a personal friend; Rob and I worked with him on the HPEF Board of Directors. But geez, if praetorianguard is correct about the sequence of events, then as a holder of copyrights myself, I have to agree with praetorianguard. I don't think that RDR Books or Steve have a legal leg to stand on, and they're gonna lose this case. As well they should. No matter how much they bluster.

Personally, I am going to find this all extremely painful to watch.

(A good chunk of the complaint and quite a bit of discussion over at The Leaky Cauldron here.)

Comments

[joel-rosenberg.livejournal.com]

As I understand it, whenever the owners have tried to shut down the publication of derivative fiction, they've been able to.

The fact that a writer can't afford to (obviously not a problem for JKR) or chooses not to go sic the legal sharks after a slash writer doesn't mean that that it's okay, or legal. (And financial damage isn't necessary in proving and punishing copyright violation -- that's the reason for punitive and exemplary damages, after all.)

Which seems fair to me. My own take on my own stuff is that I don't want to know about any such happening. Frankly, the notion of other folks playing with my characters without my permission -- and supervision -- squicks me out. Or even with, sometimes. When Feist and I were writing Murder in LaMut, about the only serious disagreements we had were some very, very minor issues with regard to internal and external dialogue of exactly two of my characters, and they bugged me far more than they should have, even though we resolved them very easily.

Which isn't to say that I think people should be prohibited from writing/publishing slash; I just think the creator's views should be honored, even when they don't consist of sending in a wolfpack of lawyers, or even a cease and desist demand.

[folk.livejournal.com]

In paper; certainly. Online, yes, but IMO because of the chilling effects that a C&D has on ISPs and fans, even in the age of the DMCA. Essentially, if the DMCA means that when WB comes to my ISP about my Bugs Bunny fanfiction, my ISP comes to me and says "you need to give WB all these details so they can sue you", I've not got the resources to say "fine, sue me!". Interestingly, the fan archive plan that's resulted from this summer's series of "LJ-vs-fandom" activities* has one of its aims as being prepared to defend legally the rights of fanwork creators against primary creators.

*this is, at least, how some fans see it.

I'm certainly split about that being a good idea, of course. Part of me thinks that having some legal backing would be great, but part of me's concerned too about losing and then our fannish playground being shut down by The Man.

I certainly think that different authors have different feelings about others playing with their characters; philosophically, I tend to come down more on the side of the fans here, while ethically I generally side with the authors.