Several 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).
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.
Thanks again to the Leaky Team for covering those comments on the case in trial. I am glad you do so.
In terms of Jungian psychology, JKR and SVA could be seen as pretty well matched, an animus driven woman vs an anima fixated man (no wonder they’ve got themselves entangled in a legal procedure).
Aside from Jungian psychology, intellectual property is an issue big corporations are pursuing strategically. Otoh, authors and journos, well: writers, will be sensitive about anything related to free speech – they have to be. And fair use relies on free speech, as for instance the admiringly never tiring Elizabeth pointed out to the legally more experienced as well as to the legally less experienced here. To put in a cautious way, WB should have expected that, when giving JKR a prominent place in their procedural tactics (a place she took), at least some of their performance before court would backfire not on them but on JKR (no, I must not indulge in remarks about senior tutor Johnson and her expert opinion).
Although JKR said she had nothing with censorship in mind, well, some in the audience would or could not take her by those very words. What she said about “then we don’t own our work any more” (sorry, don’t remember the exact wording), sounded incredibly pompous and condescending; that sentence in the pluralis majestatis seemed more suitable to a speech before the House of Lords than in a Manhattan courthouse. Alas ‘t was a Manhattan courthouse, and so, her peer audience have been all the other famous and infamous (sic!) writers wanting to have their say as well. Simply because it is their job.
I forgot to point out that with a timeline from history, noone owns the history itself so it’s a free for all, facts are in ‘public domain’. The HPL timeline is still based on a creative work that is owned by someone else and isn’t in the public domain. Although IMO the timeline is one of the more original bits of SVAs work and if it is true that WB took it then they were being cheeky. On the other hand, doesn’t SVA acknowledge WB as copyright owners on his website?? I can’t remember…
Card’s vitriol has little to do with the court case or the legalities of copyright as he got practically all of those wrong. (He doesn’t even know who the defendant is, for goodness sake!) He has used this case deceitfully, to launch a vicious attack on JKR’s character. He has neither right nor reason to do this, and frankly, it makes him sound like a deranged mysoginist with a hang up about money.
For a man who claims to care about morality, he surely displays a complete lack of it in his shameful public vilification of JKR. Personally, I think he should withdraw his scandalous statements and issue a profound public apology to her, beg her forgiveness and offer 10% of all his worldy wealth to a charity of her choosing to show his contrition
Steve Vander Ark must be very proud to be a devoted fan of Jo. Apart from lovingly publishing a book against her wishes, he now has great intellectuals speaking highly of Jo, honouring her with flowering descriptives such as Evil Witch and Thick with Hyprocracy. Wonderful. I salute you SVA, biggest fan of Jo. Can I have your autograph?
I think my dog has more intellect than this Orson whatshisname. Actually, I dont have a dog. In fact, I dont even have a goldfish. Mum, can I have a dog?
Boy, my sarcasm is on riot today, sorry folks. The 2nd paragraph had put me in a bad mood…
Steve Vander Ark must be very proud to be a devoted fan of Jo. Apart from lovingly publishing a book against her wishes, he now has great intellectuals speaking highly of Jo, honouring her with flowering descriptives such as Evil Witch and Thick with Hyprocracy. Wonderful. I salute you SVA, biggest fan of Jo. Can I have your autograph?
I think my dog has more intellect than this Orson whatshisname. Actually, I dont have a dog. In fact, I dont even have a goldfish. Mum, can I have a dog?
Boy, my sarcasm is on riot today, sorry folks. The 2nd paragraph of the article had put me in a bad mood…
OMG! How Mr. Orson can even say something like that about Jo!? He pissed me off! I agree that HP lexicon cant do any harm but if Jo doesn’t want it and she’s writing her own lexicon then people should support her. I’m with her!
Mr. Card needs to get his nose out of her butt… sorry if that sounds a bit much, but honestly, he is so smug that he must like the smell of his own gas. this is A.S. bryantt, a author who has not come anywhere close to the sucess of even the first harry potter book on its own, nor has she won nearly as many awards as jo, attacking jo claiming her books are stupid and vapid and lack depth. oddly enough, thats one of the things leading critics state the harry potter books are filled with, but they rarely say the same about bryantt’s books.
there are so many writers who are so clearly jealous of writers who create phenomenom. it is a achivement to sell 1mil books, but it is a amazing achivement to sell 400mil books in ten years, and that those not happen unless the books are good enough to sell that many.
mr. card has no understanding of the case, and even worse, his attacks on jo contradict the court evidence.
his attacks were almost as bad as antony falzone’s attacks on jo stating she was demanding something of the court that no court has ever given, which is a lie, because mrs. cendelli and her team brought forward like 5+ cases to prove him wrong, cases which set precedence to support author rights, and are legally recored cases.
I respect neil gaiman, he states that he is not a lawyer, and he is commenting on what he feels. he isent pushing it downs readers throats saying he is right and they are wrong if they disagree. I would be curious to know what he says if he read through the lexicon, which is public due to being filed as a attachment to filing 52 on justia.
His article intrigued me so I just spent a very long time reading the legal transcripts. I’m not a lawyer but I think that JKR and the other plantifs have a case.
At least if logic is used. (I know were are talking about US law here LOL).
I write fan fiction and I have written published orrigional works also. I am very aware of copyright. and I am just a very tiny minnow in a huge Universal sea.
Well to Mr Scott Orson Card (who I have never heard of by the way. He should really learn to sut his mouth. He’s clearly jealous by the sucess of Mrs Rowling and the phenonemon that his Harry Potter. What annoys me the most is that the author of this Lexicon who is clerly a Harry Potter fanatic is trying to beak J.K. Any other fan would clearly step aside and let Ms Rowling publish her own book of termonology and would anticipate its arrival eagerly.
That’s right, anyone who disagrees with Jo is just jealous! Jo is right! Jo is always right! Praise Jo! Anything Jo wants she should get, because she’s Jo. We should fall down on our knees every night and thank God we have been permitted to read Jo’s works. God should be thanking Jo himself for putting these perfect books on the earth for we low, unworthy people to read. If Jo asked me to shoot myself in the head, I would do it. Because everyone must always do what Jo wants.
Mr. Card’s statement is simply too harsh. To condemn Rowling for the act of suing ‘RDR Books’ is one thing, but to call her an “evil witch” is an utterly different thing.
Rowling has said she has no problem, whatsoever, with books criticizing and giving commentary on the Harry Potter series. She has a particular problem, however, with this specific book.
1 The world of Harry Potter it’s her world and she needs to protect it. It really took a whole lot of time and consuming effort to make it.
2 “Jo” had already mentioned some time ago that she would make one herself.
3 She should had been respected in this matter and left to at least do hers first.
She should just go ahead and let everyone know that she is still making hers and the faithfull fans will wait for hers with passion and love of Harry and respect for her.
"...this boy has as much chance of becoming an Auror as Dumbledore has of ever returning to this school."[br]"A very good chance, then," said Professor McGonagall.
Everyone has a right to voice their opinion. Damn democracy. This really should be restricted to only Jo supporters having this right…