The JKR/RDR/SVA case

[pegkerr]

If you said, "Huh?" after reading the title of this post, you are clearly not in the Harry Potter fandom and have no idea of the DRAMA going on in a New York courtroom this week, so feel free to skip.

I wrote about this case before. There are excellent commentaries over at praetorianguard's journal and chaeche's posts at fandom_lawyers.

I still can't believe that Steve did it. I considered myself friends with him back when we worked together on the HPEF Board of Directors. I just can't imagine what he was thinking. It's extremely painful to watch him destroy his relationship with someone he absolutely idolized because he was either a) inexplicably greedy and/or b) inexplicably stupid. I don't know which it is, but watching from afar, either alternative feels awful.

I hope and expect JKR to win this case. I don't know if and how Steve can pick up the pieces of his life again when it's over. (And that's not even the considering the possibility that praetorianguard raised that his erstwhile publisher RDR might turn around and sue him because of the irregularities in the indemnity clause in the contract.) He'd quit his job, and cut himself off by his own actions from the HP community he loved and reveled in.

Hubris indeed.

Comments

[arian1.livejournal.com]

He's making a book, that is comprised of a majority of work that is not his, it's someone else's. "Unauthorized" or not, he's attempting to profit on something that he knows is not his. Unauthorized tell-alls and what not are for the most about a known topic, but actually written in original perspective. Not by using someone else's IP or in that right doing no more than parroting what someone else has said and done. The amount of *original* thought and work done by this guy compared to the amount of simple reprinting of other people's work is staggering.

He's got no leg to stand on legally and his strategy in this is to make as much of a stink as he can under "fair use" and then claim the whole "Oh I'm just a little guy getting picked on by the billionaire author who I love so much. Wahh wahh wahh." Cry me a river. I see people trying this same argument every day thinking if the they can make the "big bad studio/artist/IP holder" look bad enough then they can get away with it scott free. He is making money off of someone else's work.

I find arguments to the contrary a bit naive in their scope. JKR's claim to her personal IP should not be in any way diminished because of it's success or the fact she was kind enough to give a brief nod to a fansite.