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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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NO ONE call’s Jo an evil witch or harry potter a cinderella story
Wow my respect for Mr. Card just vanished, reading his comments. I bet if anyone cared to republish his work as an “Enderverse Lexicon” and sell it would be in for a fight—good thing for him no one DOES care that much, so he doesn’t have to bother.
Would seem that Mr. Card is grossly uninformed about this law suit and is perhaps suffering from “writer’s envy”. However, he like a number of uninformed journalists is having his 15 minutes of fame. Too bad that he doesn’t know what he’s writing about.
@Mollywobbles23…...you go girl.
This Orson whathisname is rather foolish to blog such a childish attack on Jo. If his Ender series is highly recommended, I would like to read them but I feel I wont enjoy them as much knowing in the back of my mind, the author’s lack of eloquence and sensibilities in his everyday speech. As for fans of both Ender and Potter, I feel for their frustration at Orson Whathisname’ unprovoked attack on JO.
What some of those people said, like Mr.Card or w/e his name is~thats complete crap.
I bet some people are just too jealous that JKR has sold better and higher known books than them!!
As much as I’m totally annoyed about how unnessisarly harsh some of this was, I loved the line, “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” by Ken Jennings, because I’m So one of those fans. Except, he’s kinda wrong, or has just never looked at a Gilmore girls DVD case before, becasue, excempting seasons 6 and7 when the orginal director/the show creater was gone, they all had little “Gilmoreism” booklets explaining all the pop culture references put out by the show creater (Amy Sherman-Palendino) and, well, Warner Brothers.
I love HP, and I always will, but this is the one thing I do not agree with Jo on.
My father is a librarian, and he has published many times. He knows Orson Scott Card. Both know all about copyright laws. HP-Lexicon did nothing that violated Rowling’s copyright, no more than any other web site or author who wrote a book about Rowling’s work.
Even if it did, this is ridiculous that she’d try to sue the Lexicon for trying to publish an encyclopedia just because she was going to write an encyclopedia. I would think that hers would be far more detailed and far more accurate to the books, because she knows far more about the Harry Potter world than the Lexicon does.
So I see Card’s point of view here. Perhaps he was a little harsh, but he does have a good point about copyright.
As much as I’m totally annoyed about how unnessisarly harsh some of this was, I loved the line, “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” by Ken Jennings, because I’m So one of those fans. Except, he’s kinda wrong, or has just never looked at a Gilmore girls DVD case before, becasue, excempting seasons 6 and7 when the orginal director/the show creater was gone, they all had little “Gilmoreism” booklets explaining all the pop culture references put out by the show creater (Amy Sherman-Palendino) and, well, Warner Brothers.
I wonder what Stephen King has to say. I respect his thoughts and opinions as very honest and unbiased. He wrote a beautiful tribute to Jo’s Harry Potter series but not without honest criticisms either. For instance he thought Jo’s attempt to stifle story leaks went a bit too far by also suppressing pre-release book reviews. It was a fair comment but overall admires Jo’s work. So I would like to hear his thoughts as opposed to the shallow jealous ridden opinions of Terry Pratchett and Orson Whathisname. i was very very disappointed with Pratchett, as i enjoy his books.
ginnymalfoy and Rich S, I like your comments very much! That’s why this opinion piece refers to her as a hypocrite and ethically and morally, I can see that point of view.I don’t think he’s jealous of her success, I think he’s genuinely appalled by her behavior. And if he’s a Harry Potter book fan, as Kristin’s post indicates, then I give him credit for being able to separate JKR the person from the wonderful books which he has enjoyed. All the opinions and comments in the world will not determine the outcome of the legal case, the judge will. But as WB and JKR continue to milk this mass marketed “cash cow ” called Harry Potter for all it’s worth with splitting one book into two movies, theme parks and traveling exhibitions…..I feel like the magic of it all is taken away. It’s been a great thing, but it’s ridiculous to me now. Just my opinion.
It’s nice to see some sense be made about the trial on this website…God knows it isn’t coming from the crazed fanbase.
Even if the book does eventually get published, who is going to buy it? Not the majority of HP fans who fiercely align themselves with Jo, not people who aren’t HP fans; possibly the newcomers to the fandom who want to know what’s what, but if the book is essentially what’s on the website, I can’t see why they’d bother buying it when they can get it for free online.
It seems to me that, regardless of whether Jo wins the trial, she has already won because this book will, as my book publishing professor says, “die a quiet little death” once it’s released.
nunki- that OSC article is from a local paper/magazine type thing that he writes a regular column for.
you can comment, but either no one has or the comments are being deleted because the only thing up there now says “ouch!”
classy…
nunki- that OSC article is from a local paper/magazine type thing that he writes a regular column for.
you can comment, but either no one has or the comments are being deleted because the only thing up there now says “ouch!”
classy…
Does anyone else get the sense that an awful lot of mediocre writers are hitching their cart to this anti-Jo bandwagon. Gee, i wonder if they could be trying to increase the market for their own books… Clearly, they haven’t done even a modicum of research into the case, and yet they are coming out against Jo in the strongest terms possible, as if they really care, as if they have some sort of personal stake in all this. What they care about is cozying up to us, a potentially huge market for them. But they have underestimated the Harry Potter fandom. Most of us support Jo based on the facts at hand—we’re readers, after all, and have acquainted ourselves with the court documents. I get that there is something archetypal about SVA’s “heroic struggle against the evil WB empire,” and as consumers of speculative fiction, this should naturally appeal to us. But most of the fans do not blindly and ignorantly support SVA simply because he is one of us, despite the surfeit of biased media coverage telling us otherwise.
That’s just rude. Very rude. Jo Rowling might be in tears, and that damn guy doesn’t have a right to call her an evil witch, we all love Jo and no matter who wins the trial, we are still with Jo and we won’t go against her.
I feel that all that Steve Vander Ark is doing is taking her work and creating it into a unneeded encyclopedia, it’s unneeded because Jo Rowling is already making a encyclopedia and also because the book would only be for lazy readers, people who don’t want to read the whole adventure of Harry Potter.
I’d love to protest in front of the trial, because Steve Vander Ark doesn’t even know how fans feel right now, I think we should all form and protest, perhaps we can send in a letter, signed by the fans, that shows how we feel about Steve Vander Ark’s book. Clearly, the fans of Jo Rowling and Harry Potter don’t want this encyclopedia, so why publish it if people can read the damn encyclopedia through online? It doesn’t need to be a book, it’s already online, it’s already easier to find information through the online website, so why the Hell would someone waste their money to flip through the pages for information? The information is online, we don’t need to flip through a unneeded book for information. Also, what is the information for? We readers already know as much information as others.
It’s totally unneeded!
Funny, I don’t have a sour taste in my mouth regarding Jo, but I now do with OSC. Shame since I love his books.
Aside from the ‘evil witch’ comment, which is just in poor taste, I do completely agree with these authors and the others. If the only legal problem with the lexicon book is that there isn’t sufficient acknowledgement, then that is a problem easily rectified. The book is not a word-by-word copy of the Potter books because that would simply be…. the Potter books.
I love this series, almost obsessively so. (okay, completely obsessively so), and I’m very thankful to Rowling for creating it, but I have never heard of a popular author who in this day and age, did not have a reference book about their work. It just doesn’t happen. In fact, I’d think that an author would be insulted if people didn’t want a reference book of their works. Kind of like saying, here are the books, read them, but there’s nothing else to look for – they’re not important enough.
These three authors are not the only ones who are siding with the lexicon. I’ve only read one article that was on JK’s side on this – and yes, many of those on the lexicon’s side are fans of hers. It’s possible to be a fan and still disagree with her. It’s possible to disagree with her and not have an ulterior motive – like to make themselves look more important. I love my mom – she’s one of my best friends – doesn’t mean I don’t disagree with her or think she’s flat out wrong about things. To dismiss opposing arguments and opinions with such glib statements are rather childish.
I think it’s completely unfair for someone like Mr. Card (who obviously doesn’t know very much about Jo Rowling) to make such ridiculous comments. I don’t know Jo Rowling personally, but I’d like to think that, for a fan, I know as much as possible about her and I have never understood her to be someone with a selfish or greedy attitude. Ms. Rowling is a hero of mine and I support her stand in this case completely.
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Sorry, I haven’t read all the comments yet, so I’m sure this has already been brought up.
Mr. Card, why would JKR have to pay Steve’s fees if he isn’t the one being sued? Oh, maybe it’s because Card hasn’t paid any attention whatsoever to the facts of this case, and there doesn’t even know who is on trial here. Whoops!