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

[knitmeapony.livejournal.com]

The idea that reorganizing work -- information architecture, well-referenced encyclopedias -- is not 'original thought' is troubling to me. We don't allow 'database' copyrights -- that is to say, we don't allow a phone book to be copyrighted for the same reason no one sues Wikipedia or Encyclopedia Brittanica for their entries.

Yes, this is more in-depth. But we have to ask the question where to draw the line.

Are Wikipedia's entries acceptable? (Make no mistake, those folks are making money -- not for profit does not mean no one gets a salary at the Wikimedia foundation.) All right, how about an entire, chapter-sized section in a 'Sci-Fi/Fantasy' encyclopedia that goes deeper in depth? All right, then how about an entire volume of a multi-volume SF/F encyclopedia?

[kijjohnson.livejournal.com]

If he is writing his own copy about Rowlings's work, that's okay. If he quotes indirectly, that's okay, too. If he is quoting in a limited way from her works, that is also fine as long as he stays under the upper limit allowed.

Everyone knows that there's a limit for the maximum length of a single quote. There's also a top limit for the percentage of the work that is quotations from another copyrighted work, regardless of the lengths of the individual quotations. It sounds as though he's gone over the acceptable percentage of direct quotes.

Copyright is so very slippery.

[knitmeapony.livejournal.com]

The 'maximum limit' is slippery too, though. And context is so important. I really do think it boils down, in a big and real way, to how you view copyright, author's rights, and all those big weird areas of the law where the digital world is changing things.

[arian1.livejournal.com]

The maximum limits have been pretty well defined in precedent. I'll have to dig it up later when I have a chance.

[knitmeapony.livejournal.com]

Would love to read it!