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JK Rowling Go Home!
By Jim O | April 23, 2008
From the Oh Puleeze department:
JK Rowling is using the US court system to block a small time website owner from publishing a book of Harry Potter terminology. Rowling, who has become a billionaire from Harry Potter, says it’s not about the money. Cough, bs, cough. Warner Brothers is also party to the suit in US Federal court. Talk about a waste of court time.
The book in question is written by a librarian named Steven Vander Ark who has maintained a website for several years, a website that Rowling herself admits to having used as a resource herself at times. She has been quoted by various news sources as having said:
This is such a great site that I have been known to sneak into an Internet cafe while out writing and check a fact rather than go into a bookshop and buy a copy of Harry Potter (which is embarrassing). A Web site for the dangerously obsessive; my natural home,
Does Major League Baseball own all of its past stats and the scores of today’s games and the names of the players, or are those news? Isn’t Harry Potter terminology public information by now?
US law that governs this is the doctrine of “fair use” from the Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. § 107, reprinted here:
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections § 106 and § 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include:
-
- the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
- the nature of the copyrighted work;
- the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
- the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.
Source: http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html.
OK, so it is of a commercial nature. So are newspapers and other media that publish scores and sports statistics.
The nature of the copyrighted work. It’s just a compilation of terminology, not a usurpation of the characters or the creativity.
The amount? These are long books and films we are talking about. Again, this is a lexicon of terminology.
The effect on the the potential market? Well, somehow I don’t think it’s going to affect the sales of this billionaire’s books and movies. It might help however.
U.S. District Court Judge Robert Patterson, who is hearing this case, urged the parties to settle. I suggest $0.005/copy for Rowling, a free copy of the book, and she gets to keep using the site. And then a quick flight back home.
That’s my $0.02 worth, which is more than Rowling and Warner Brothers deserve.
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