“Most commentary on the internet seems to break down into people picking sides based on personalities and opinions. As with most grey areas of law, it isn’t cut and dried, and even when an appeals court-sized decision is handed down, it probably won’t become cut and dried, because “Fair Use” is one of those things, like pornography, we are meant to know when we see them.”
Mr. Gaiman remarks that the first two books he did were unauthorised, and as such, “my heart is on the side of the people doing the unauthorised books”.
For me this really comes down to the fact that JKR and WB let the Lexicon site exist under the pretense that it was not for monetary gain. SVA/RDR publishing this book violates that. JKR and WB would have had every right to shut the site down way back when because of copyright infringement, but they let it slide, and I have no problem with that, just now it’s coming back to bite them. How many people think if they wanted to publish a guide to Star Wars they’d get away with it? Or Lord of the Rings? The Tolkien estate would stop that in a hearbeat. I’m not talking about essays or commentaries, but just index or glossary types of books.
JKR’s work may be derivative in that she’s taken stuff from myth and lore and applied it to her own story. But by doing so she’s made it her own. In what way does SVA’s book make the info he’s gathered from HP his own? How is it not purely a derivative work, which as copyright holder on the original material JKR should have control over according to law?
Oh and by the way Gaiman is VERY liberal with use of his work. For instance, right now you can read one of his novels American Gods in its entirety online for FREE.
And I agree with whoever said that just because he said ““my heart is on the side of the people doing the unauthorised books” doesn’t mean he sides with SVA in particular.
Anyway, I personally think that no matter who wins, in the long run everyone is going to loose because of this.
Thank you, Miguel and Elizabeth. I am so very tired of this coming down to “Jo Rowling is great! She deserves to win because Steve Vanderark is MEAN and a PLAGIARIST!” That isn’t the point and never was.
I hope they settle. This is the sort of case lawyers dread because the issues are so complex.
I wont be interested much in the lexicon book because its like a dictionary on the potter world and I am all about reading the dialogues between the characters in the books. So I dont think i’ll be getting it if it comes out.
J. K. Rowling
AN ARTICLE in last week’s Mail on Sunday said that Warner Bros had begun a legal battle with a film director who claims to have devised an earlier version of Harry potter. There is no such legal battle. We accept that J. K. Rowling is the sole creator of her Harry potter character and that there are no material similarities between her books and the film mentioned.
FYI… Neil Gaiman spent a weekend in mid March at Orbital 2008. He was on a panel with Steve Vander Ark and spent a large amount of time listening to SVA’s spin on the case. So his reaction is likely due to the “information” received from SVA. SVA can spin a tale…
Re dpiggy’s comment that “Neil Gaiman spent a weekend in mid March at Orbital 2008. He was on a panel with Steve Vander Ark and spent a large amount of time listening to SVA’s spin on the case. So his reaction is likely due to the ‘information’ received from SVA. SVA can spin a tale…”
Judging by numerous interviews I’ve heard and read, Neil is a very intelligent and thoughtful man who is quite capable of listening to both sides of the issue and making up his mind. Also, having been a fan of Neil’s for many years, I can assure you that it is not at all out of character for him to side on the liberal end of the fair use law. As he mentions in his blog, he has not contested unauthorized books about himself, and in the “Neil Gaiman: Notes from the Underground” documentary video, published years before the trial began, he talks about his work with the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, and how the right to free speech is something to be protected and treasured. So I would say that it is his own personal beliefs that incline him towards the side of the Lexicon, and not necessarily comments made by Steve on the panel.
Of course, you are free to disagree with Neil, as is your right, but I believe that you are doing him a disservice by implying that he cannot make up his own mind independently without being hoodwinked by someone else.
@ John Green: “How many people think if they wanted to publish a guide to Star Wars they’d get away with it? Or Lord of the Rings? The Tolkien estate would stop that in a hearbeat. I’m not talking about essays or commentaries, but just index or glossary types of books.” See http://www.amazon.com/Tolkien-Bestiary-David-Day/dp/0517120771/ref=pd_sim_b_title_42 . It’s…pretty much the same type of book as the lexicon (but with pretty pictures!) – in-universe referencing of the creatures/peoples of the novels. Since he’s since reprinted it as http://ayulittleone.blogsome.com/2005/11/ ‘Characters from Tolkien’, with a bit of original thought…but not much. It just serves the same purpose as the lexicon – a handy reference guide, if you don’t remember who Emmeline Vance/Elladan is, why you are meant to care, and don’t fancy wading through hundreds of pages of the novels to find a passing reference.
I’m pretty torn regarding the legal issue: I think this sort of publication is pretty respectable in literary terms, it’s meant to allow easy referencing for those who want it; but, nonetheless, the lack of originality does disturb me. As Gaiman said Pratchett said (himself paraphrasing Tolkien – nothing is original, after all), fantasy is a cauldron from which each author takes and to which author adds. The fact that this book adds little to the genre is worrying. The fact that the authors & publishers intend to make a profit without having contributed very much is more so. But, then again, one might argue that all successful authors are making profit that is disproportionate to their contribution to society. Nor can we really suppose that literary publishing is a particularly fair, or particularly nice sector of society – how many excellent and original writers languish in the doldrums because nobody wants to read their work, and how many glamour-models/footballers wives succeed by publishing vapid autobiographies.
But I’ve found the conduct of both S.V.A./RDR and J.K.R./Warner less than perfect. With the first – I can really sympathise with SVA – Rowling praised his site on her site about a year ago, saying that she liked it, and would dip into it if she wanted to check a detail. It’s not hard to imagine from that that she liked the site. And consequently, that she would be okay with it being published (because, let’s face it, there’s something about a physical book that a webpage cannot beat). But he and RDR really seem to have gone the wrong way about this entire business – if you are writing a reference work to somebody else’s work, it helps to get their consent, or at least avoid antagonising them – and RDR seem to have been at best careless, at worst actively exploitative of the situation.
But as for JKR…I really enjoyed her sarcasm (I fell in love with the books because of the humour of the earlier ones) in the transcript, and I can understand that she feels upset that someone is trying to make a profit from her work without adding anything themselves. But, I found her at times contradictory (criticising the Lexicon for deducing meanings that she did not mean – despite the fact that she had never given those meanings, which made the Lexicon’s deductions, in fact, the original thought she was claiming it was deficient in…); I disliked her apparent attempts to disavow having ever considered the Lexicon in anything other than a patronising, ‘Oh what nice work, children’ manner; I found her some of her arguments against for the need for the Lexicon strange (‘It’s pointless – any seven year old with a Latin dictionary could look that up’. Which raises two points – firstly, how many seven year olds have Latin dictionaries and are capable of adequately understanding them; secondly, does that not make any sort of secondary or tertiary work pointless – why read ‘The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’, when any seven year old with a copy of Ammianus Marcellinus…you get the idea), to the point where I wondered where I wondered what the point of her own ‘Scottish project’ was, since ‘any child can just go back and look at the books’.
Worst of all, I did not respect her statements regarding her projected encyclopedia, which amounted to manipulation of public opinion (blackmail, even), and a betrayal of the author-reader relationship. Put simply – there is a two-way binding between author and reader. Without her writing her books, we would not have Harry Potter, and because of that, we are indebted to her. But, without us buying her books, she would never have got past Philosopher’s Stone, and because of that, she is indebted to us. It’s a double loyalty, a double link of gratitude – we should respect her, she should respect us. Now, she previously promised us, her loyal readers who have made her rich in reward for her creativity and the happiness she has given us, that she intended to write an encyclopedia-style book to accompany Harry Potter, to be written reasonably soon in the future. Now, however, she is claiming that she feels so upset and drained by this issue that she may not write it after all. This is, firstly, manipulation – intentionally or not, it has the effect of making readers who want to read her book outraged at SVA/RDR, who are depriving us of her work. This is an astute PR move on her part, but hardly honorable. But, more importantly, it is a betrayal of the author-reader relationship – if an author promises a book to the readers to whom she owes her success, threats to not write that book should not be made lightly. They are unfair. They are a dismissal of the readers, and of their relevance to her own work. That Rowling, who has previously been very friendly to readers and fans (remarkably so, really), is now being so cavalier of the feelings of her readers, is not only dishonorable of any author, it is unworthy of the Rowling we have previously seen.
Anyway, that’s my rant. Applause to Miguel and Elizabeth – I found your entries really thought-provoking.
I wonder if JKRowling paid the city of Barcelona and the Catalan people any money for using the name and concept of their Diagonal Avenue from where she made up her Diagon Alley. For those who don’t know it’s an avenue that runs diagonally through the city. Interesting, isn’t it?
I think Gaiman misses the point to a large extent, and many people here do as well.
“Unauthorized” has nothing to do with it. Anyone can write an “unauthorized” book about anything they want. It’s just that the material has to be original stuff like criticism, commentary, analysis, and not just regurgitating the original material.
His first book was a bio on Duran Duran. Nothing like the Lexicon.
His second was a book of quotations, which could potentially have copyright issues if it was nothing but those quotes with no commentary on them. But even in that case, that book seems to be quotes from a huge number of different books and movies, as opposed to the Lexicon, which takes everything from one author.
I also have to disagree that this case is all about personality. If this book is truly over 90% direct quotes, with little or no commentary, that does fall much closer to plagiarism than fair use.
And there are plenty of books about HP already, some authorized and some not (and JKR didn’t take action against any of them, she couldn’t since they didn’t take as much directly as this one reportedly has). ANYONE can write a book about HP or anything else for that matter, that book just has to contain original material and not just take things verbatim from the original and switch the order around.
Snape had turned spy against Voldemort, "at great personal risk." Was that the job he had taken up again? Had he made contact with the Death Eaters, perhaps? Pretended that he had never really gone over to Dumbledore, that he had been, like Voldemort hims
For me this really comes down to the fact that JKR and WB let the Lexicon site exist under the pretense that it was not for monetary gain. SVA/RDR publishing this book violates that. JKR and WB would have had every right to shut the site down way back when because of copyright infringement, but they let it slide, and I have no problem with that, just now it’s coming back to bite them. How many people think if they wanted to publish a guide to Star Wars they’d get away with it? Or Lord of the Rings? The Tolkien estate would stop that in a hearbeat. I’m not talking about essays or commentaries, but just index or glossary types of books.
JKR’s work may be derivative in that she’s taken stuff from myth and lore and applied it to her own story. But by doing so she’s made it her own. In what way does SVA’s book make the info he’s gathered from HP his own? How is it not purely a derivative work, which as copyright holder on the original material JKR should have control over according to law?