In The News
JKR/WB vs. RDR Books Trial: Opinions
Companion BooksSeveral public figures have voiced their opinions on the JKR/WB vs. RDR Books court case:
Hugo and Nebula award-winning writer Orson Scott Card claims that J.K. Rowling’s “hypocrisy is so thick” that he “can hardly breathe”.
He goes on to say:
“Once you publish fiction, Ms. Rowling, anybody is free to write about it, to comment on it, and to quote liberally from it, as long as the source is cited.”
He predicts the outcome of the case:
“1. Publication of Lexicon will go on without any problem or prejudice, because it clearly falls within the copyright law’s provision for scholarly work, commentary and review.
2. Rowling will be forced to pay Steven Vander Ark’s legal fees, since her suit was utterly without merit from the start.
3. People who hear about this suit will have a sour taste in their mouth about Rowling from now on. Her Cinderella story once charmed us. Her greedy evil-witch behavior now disgusts us. And her next book will be perceived as the work of that evil witch.”
(EDITOR’S NOTE: With regard to Mr. Card’s statement that a published work of fiction may be written about or quoted “as long as the source is cited”, note that plaintiffs JKR/WB’s claim that the Lexicon book fails to properly quote or cite Ms. Rowling’s works. Exact testimony regarding such is available here in the trial transcripts).
Game show Jeopardy! wiz Ken Jennings writes about the trial on his blog in an entry entitled “Harry Potter and the Glossary of Doom”. He says:
“Books like The Harry Potter Lexicon are nothing new. When I was a kid, I had a bunch of unlicensed glossaries like these on my shelves: Robert Foster’s Complete Guide to Middle-Earth, Bjo Trimble’s Star Trek Concordance, etc. (Both of these books may later have been approved by their respective marketing empires, I’m not sure, but they were strictly fan-pub back then.) Even today, you can walk up to the TV/Movies shelf in a Barnes & Noble and find cash-in essay collections and reference works analyzing Lost, Firefly, The West Wing, and other hits. All these books profit by putting the Big Media Brand Name front and center on their covers–without the pop-culture teat, they wouldn’t sell a single copy. Profiteers, right, “Jo”? Burn them all!”
Jennings also notes:
”...the plagiarism claims are silly. Direct quotes from the books are rare, and are used only in epigrammatic fashion. Rowling may be referring to the fact that the Lexicon does faithfully describe facts and events from her series, and at length, but that’s an inevitable feature of any reference book. The literary references all look legitimate to me, as if due care has been taken to rephrase them away from Rowling’s language.”
On the subject of companion books, he says:
“In a free society, it’s good that people can talk and write freely about art. Good things come out of a society being able to talk and write freely about art–whether the artist likes it or not. Fan-published “derivative works” are a tiny legal niche, but they’re not an entirely unimportant one. Maybe you’re a Gilmore Girls fan who’d love to see an index annotating and explaining the show’s dense web of cultural references, or a U2 fan working on a complete concordance to their lyrics, or a Spider-Man fan with an issue-by-issue chronology of his Marvel Comics-owned “life” on your website. This stuff is going to keep disappearing if the legal precedents keep following the Twin Peaks and Castle Rock path.”
(EDITOR’S NOTE: With regard to Mr. Jennings’ statement that literary references are legitimate if “due care has been taken to rephrase them away from Rowling’s language”, note plaintiffs JKR/WB’s claim that the Lexicon book too frequently uses JKR’s exact language. Exact testimony regarding such is available here in the trial transcripts).
Finally, author Neil Gaiman follows up on his post from the 19th regarding the trial and fair use with two additional entries:
On the 24th, Mr. Gaiman’s clarifies fair use for a reader of his blog with:
“As far as I can see it’s only about a couple of really grey areas of copyright law—I suspect, and I am SO not a lawyer, that it will come down to whether or not what Mr Vander Ark had done to Ms Rowling’s work in his Lexicon was sufficiently “transformative” as to render it a new work.”
He offers as an example:
“If someone did a website in which everything in Sandman is listed in alphabetical order, as a concordance or lexicon… whether or not I was going to do one doesn’t matter. Whether or not someone else is making money off my work and words and ideas doesn’t matter. Whether it’s a good lexicon or a bad lexicon doesn’t matter. Whether it quotes me extensively may or may not matter (how extensively I’m quoted is a matter of Fair Use, but paraphrase me and you are home and dry on that count). What matters is whether it sufficiently transforms what I’ve done into something else by taking those entries and putting them into alphabetical order. “
Today, Mr. Gaiman writes a follow up on copyright, in which he posts a letter sent to him by one of his readers, a lawyer who co-authored a paper on fair use for the Journal of the Copyright Society of the United States. Leaky readers may find the letter informative.
Thanks as always to our readers who have emailed or posted links to articles or editorials on the trial.
Complete Leaky trial coverage can be found here.
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Ouch, I have to admit that Mr. Card sounds really nasty in what was posted here in leaky, but have you guys read the entire comment? so yeah he’s kinda harsh there too, but he does have a point, don’t get me wrong, I LOVE JK, and Harry Potter, but Mr. Card has a very balid point, and JK is being really harsh with lexicon, the book was probably goin to go on sell, and do good, not great but good, and when JK published her own book, it would be a bestseller, and now it’s going to be very different, you’ll see. Now don’t hate me, I’m just saying what’s on my mind
Have any of these detractors ever spawned a franchise? Hmmm… I don’t think any “unofficial” lexicon will ever come close to one written by JKR herself. I was patient enough to wait for all seven books in the series – I can wait for whatever JKR writes next. Writing – and I mean real writing and not just the “cut and paste” method – takes time. Any real writer knows that.
Have any of these detractors ever spawned a franchise? Hmmm… I don’t think any “unofficial” lexicon will ever come close to one written by JKR herself. I was patient enough to wait for all seven books in the series – I can wait for whatever JKR writes next. Writing – and I mean real writing and not just the “cut and paste” method – takes time. Any real writer knows that.
Have any of these detractors ever spawned a franchise? Hmmm… I don’t think any “unofficial” lexicon will ever come close to one written by JKR herself. I was patient enough to wait for all seven books in the series – I can wait for whatever JKR writes next. Writing – and I mean real writing and not just the “cut and paste” method – takes time. Any real writer knows that.
Bleh. :-(
I don’t like all this conflict and negativity. What can I say, I’m a wuss.
Do you suppose Warner Brothers are waiting for the suit to be settled before they give us Half-Blood Prince info?
::longs for pictures and trailer news::
Boy am I glad that Scott Card’s screed went up around the same time mine did! I’ve gotten off comparatively lightly here as a result.
Since the only substantive comments here about my piece have been along the lines of “That Jeopardy! guy? Uh, who cares what he thinks?”, I’ll take a shot at answering that.
I’ve been interested in the RDR case from the beginning—as a big HP fan (and occasional leaky-cauldron reader, by the way) but also since I’ve long been interested in transformative copyright and related issues. One of the first posts on my blog in 2004 was a (WAY too long!) analysis of Castle Rock v. Carol, which precedent will likely figure into the judge’s RDR decision.
I’m also a (best-selling, he said modestly) writer now, and felt informed enough about the RDR case that I thought it was worth a quick blog post. I mean, all of you saw fit to publish your opinions on the Internet, right? You’re all intellectual-property lawyers, then? When I do the same, I’d expect arguments a little more substantive than “Who asked you, game show boy?”
By the way, I’ve read the entire transcripts and I’m still strongly inclined to go with RDR here. That has nothing to do with whether Vander Ark or Rowling are better writers (no contest there), nicer people to puppies (who cares?), etc. It’s strictly a copyright issue. The Lexicon seems like a textbook example of a kind of book that’s been common and accepted for decades, especially in academia, and I’d like legal precedent not to keep chipping away at it.
Just posting here on Leaky what I just submitted to be posted to Mr. Card’s comment section. Considering that, despite numerous posters here saying they have sent in comments as well, the only comment currently showing merely says “ouch”, I’m guessing that my own post won’t make the cut, either. I just had to say something, though, I was too incensed. Just so that it wasn’t an entire waste of energy, though, I’d like to post it on a site that isn’t afraid of letting viewers express their opinions:
“It is my opinion that you are being rather hypocritical about Ms. Rowling being a coward, when you and your staff don’t post responses that refute what you’ve posted here. It is also my opinion that you come across as either uninformed or misinformed in regards to this case. I’ve been following this case rather closely (my husband says obsessively), and, while I am very much a fan of Ms. Rowling, I think that I have maintained an open mind to both sides so that I could form an unbiased view. After reading the transcripts of the trial, reviewing the manuscript of the Lexicon book, and reading every other document I have come across in regards to the case, it is my opinion that JKR and WB are in the right here. It would take far too long to refute what you say point-by-point, as I disagree with pretty much everything, so I will instead focus on one part that particularly rankled. You called JKR greedy in your article, but I fail to see how you come to that conclusion, unless it is your opinion that all supremely wealthy individuals are greedy? For she has repeatedly stated during this trial that she is not suing RDR for monetary gain, as she’s well aware that she has plenty of money- in fact the only monetary damage she is concerned about is that if this Lexicon book is published, it will give consumers virtually no reason to purchase her own companion books (Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them & Quidditch Through the Ages), whose proceeds are given to the Comic Relief charity. Likewise, she has expressed concern that this Lexicon would cause consumers to not purchase her own encyclopedia, when she intends to again donate all royal ties to a charity. She has also stated that, should she and WB win this lawsuit, she will donate all financial damages paid by RDR to charity. While I agree that she has no legal legs to stand on in regards to the possible-future-encyclopedia bit, I certainly think it is admirable that she intends to spend the time and energy writing such an exhaustive book in order to raise money for charity. So, forgive me, I fail to see how anything related to this case makes her greedy. Also, as a side, you erroneously state that Mr. Vander Ark has made no money from working on the Lexicon website. He in fact told the court that he has made some profits from advertisers, particularly Google. While it may not be a substantial amount, I believe it was said to be about $7,000. I’m just pointing this example out, as you make quite a few mistatements in this article that caused me to file it as “uninformed or misinformed”. I hope you make a visit to the Great and Powerful Oz yourself, for the courage to not censor disagreeing viewpoints on your personal webpage.”
@Ken Jennings
Mr. Jennings with all due respect this site also includes all the court documents and a good amount of the proposed Lexicon. Yes, there are a lot of “we love Jo” comments however, for the most part a great many of the comments made here have been intelligent and well researched, far more informed that what has appeared in the media.
Orson Scott Card is just jelous. He is jelous of the fact that J.K. Rowling writes one series and it becomes the most famous of all time. After such unjust and harsh comments I will have a very hard time reading Orson Scott Card’s books with out distain. I do agree with Mr. Jennings when he states that there were hundreds of companion books to series like The Lord of the Ring and Star Trek, but if you look at those books they do not usually use the exact language exactly. Using A Tolkien’s Beasary for an example, one can find no lenghty exact quotes to describe something. Instead it is all a compendium of facts (usually dates and habits of the thing in question) taken from the book but not copied. I also think that these should be seperated because there is no encyclopedia by the author in either Star Trek, Star Wars, or The Lord of the Rings, that fact that J.K. Rowling is planning to write an enclycopiedia herself should be reason enough to side with her. LONG LIVE JO
@Ken Jennings
I do agree with you that this is “strictly a copyright issue.” I don’t mind the idea that SVA is publishing a Lexicon book. The problem is that he uses JKR’s exact words throughout nearly the entire book and hardly adds anything original. He doesn’t just mention something and then explain it. He takes it straight from JKR’s books. Everything in his book can be found in the Harry Potter books. Even worse, he doesn’t properly cite when he does directly quote JKR’s work. You would think that a librarian would know better. Apparently he did, because in his contract with RDR there was a stipulation about how he wouldn’t be involved in any lawsuits. He suspected this would happen even he knew that what he was doing was wrong. JKR has allowed many other Harry Potter reference books to be published. The difference is that those books actually added some original commentary to her work.
“The Lexicon seems like a textbook example of a kind of book that’s been common and accepted for decades, especially in academia, and I’d like legal precedent not to keep chipping away at it.”
Posted by Ken Jennings on April 26, 2008 @ 04:10 PM
I appreciate that you have read the transcripts, but part of the transcripts that stood out the most to me was that the defense could not produce a single example of a book that took as much as or more than the Lexicon, so in my opinion the trial showed that the Lexicon is not a textbook example.
As such, I believe that this case doesn’t chip away at accepted fair use precedent, it chips away at accepted copyright protections.
A reason why the lexicon does NOT violate JKR’s copyright on her encyclopedia:
If Rowling had written, published, and released her encyclopedia, then the lexicon would infringe her rights, and she would have every right and reason to file a law suit.
But no such encyclopedia is in print yet. All the lexicon did was write a book documenting J.K. Rowling’s books, which is perfectly legal, and which many other people have done. Did she sue them as well? No.
The issue isn’t the HP series. The issue is Rowling’s encyclopedia. That is where the copyright comes into question, but since Rowling’s encyclopedia isn’t even finished, has not been edited, certainly hasn’t been published and surely tells us a lot more about the HP world than Vander Ark’s encyclopedia will, then there has been no violation.
Think about this before you take sides, people.
“I appreciate that you have read the transcripts, but part of the transcripts that stood out the most to me was that the defense could not produce a single example of a book that took as much as or more than the Lexicon, so in my opinion the trial showed that the Lexicon is not a textbook example.”
Then the defense is an ass. :) I haven’t owned a copy in decades but I believe Robert Foster’s Complete Guide to Middle Earth takes a comparable amount. I believe Bjo Trimble’s Star Trek Concordance does as well.
Mr. Scott Card does make some valid points, although I think his personal attacks on Jo’s character are totally out of line. Its a shame that everyone seems to “pick a side” in this case, and therefore lose respect toward the other party. I see it on both sides. Lexicon supporters bash Jo, while JKR supporter bash Steve Vander Ark. Its so sad to see this happening to such a wonderful fandom!
I have to agree with Athena….I would buy JKR’s book way before anyone elses.Afterall she can create any sub-story (plot-twist) she wants now. I hope she comes up with some good ones.
@ Athena
I think directly copying from, not adding anything original to, and then failing to properly cite from JKR’s books makes it an issue about the Harry Potter books. All of the other books that she previously allowed actually added some original commentary.
Also, if this is only about the encyclopedia, then what will happen if RDR/SVA win? Does that mean that they will be able to sue JKR when she writes her own encyclopedia for infringing on their rights?
By the way, comments here about the overwhelming amount of Rowling verbiage in the Lexicon don’t strike me as plausible-or backed up by the transcripts. The “91%” number in one WB exhibit refers to any information derived from Rowling’s books, no matter how distantly-not just verbatim cut-and-paste.
I’m guessing that the amount of Rowling text in the published lexicon is roughly equivalent to the Web one—that is, vastly outnumbered by legitimately summarized and paraphrased copy. On the stand, Rowling seems just as exercised about the latter as the former, which doesn’t inspire confidence.
Didn’t mean to get sucked into this, so I think I’ll leave it at that. It cracks me up that the comment above about how “a great many of the comments made here have been intelligent and well researched” is followed immediately by one that starts “Orson Scott Card is just jelous” and ends “LONG LIVE JO!” I know, you guys are trying.
“Didn’t mean to get sucked into this, so I think I’ll leave it at that. It cracks me up that the comment above about how “a great many of the comments made here have been intelligent and well researched” is followed immediately by one that starts “Orson Scott Card is just jelous” and ends “LONG LIVE JO!” I know, you guys are trying.”—Posted by Ken Jennings on April 26, 2008 @ 05:06 PM
I’m sure we all appreciate your condescension, Mr. Jennings.
Sorry, comments are closed for this article.
Leaky Poll
Since DH was published, your interest in Potter fandom has:
- Increased! I'm more involved now than I ever was!795 (22%)
- It's stayed at the same level of fun it always has!1337 (38%)
- Decreased slightly: I only check sites a few times a week now.888 (25%)
- Severely lowered. Without new canon, I'm bored.358 (10%)
- It's gone. In fact, I can't even answer this poll because I'm not really visting a Potter site.112 (3%)
‘Card has written that an increase in crime in USA of the 1970s and 1980s “might well have been the result” of what he calls “the New Morality and the Pill” because they may have increased the number of babies born to “the people with poor impulse control” who are “most likely to be irresponsible parents.”’
Taken from a CITED reference on Orson Scott Card’s Wikipedia page… anybody who justifies these kind of opinions, doesn’t amount to much in my book