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J. K. Rowling Wins $6,750 In Infringement Case
Posted by
kdawson
on Wed Sep 10, 2008 01:37 PM
from the slap-it-into-gringott's-bank dept.
from the slap-it-into-gringott's-bank dept.
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "J. K. Rowling didn't make enough money on Harry Potter, so she had to make sure that the 'Harry Potter Lexicon' was shut down. After a trial in Manhattan in Warner Bros. v. RDR Books, she won, getting the judge to agree with her (and her friends at Warner Bros. Entertainment) that the 'Lexicon' did not qualify for fair use protection. In a 68-page decision (PDF) the judge concluded that the Lexicon did a little too much 'verbatim copying,' competed with Ms. Rowling's planned encyclopedia, and might compete with her exploitation of songs and poems from the Harry Potter books, although she never made any such claim in presenting her evidence. The judge awarded her $6,750 and granted her an injunction that would prevent the 'Lexicon' from seeing the light of day." Groklaw has an exhaustive discussion of the judgement.
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An Appeal In the "Harry Potter Lexicon" Case 189 comments
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "RDR Books, the would-be publisher of the book version of the 'Harry Potter Lexicon' Web site, has filed an appeal from the judge's decision in Warner Bros. Pictures v. RDR Books, the case involving the Harry Potter Lexicon. The judge, after a bench trial, issued an injunction and awarded statutory damages of $6,750 (as we discussed at the time), holding that the Lexicon was not protected by fair use due to (a) sloppiness in attribution in sections, (b) the length of some of the quotes, and (c) imitation of J. K. Rowling's writing style in portions. I recently wrote an article criticizing the opinion, but doubting that an appeal would be taken in view of the small damages award. I guess I underestimated the resolve of the defendants and defendants' lawyers — who include the Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society."
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What does her wealth have to do with it? (Score:5, Insightful)
I was not aware that society's subjective judgment of whether someone has made "enough" money from one's intellectual property was a factor in copyright law. Either there's a copyright infringement or there isn't. Rowling's wealth and success are irrelevant.
Re:What does her wealth have to do with it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course society's subjective judgment is important - if you don't make "enough" from your "intellectual property" you can't very well pay the lawyers to defend it, can you?
Parent
Re:What does her wealth have to do with it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:What does her wealth have to do with it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Kdawson is an idiot for not removing the personal bias from the blurb.
Point of order. Why is it wrong for a Slashdot post to express an opinion? Especially where the submitter provided the actual, 68-page, decision so that readers can make up their own mind.
Parent
Re:What does her wealth have to do with it? (Score:5, Funny)
"Why is it wrong for a Slashdot post to express an opinion?"
Because of the borg, you will be assimilated, resistance is futile. opinion must be shared by all, or not exist. there can be no bias, except that of the slashdrone. there must be no argument on what is right, for the slashdrones can not argue.
Parent
Re:What does her wealth have to do with it? (Score:5, Insightful)
First, because few people read the article (especially when it's the size of a small novel), so making a hugely biased summary distorts the facts. Second, it's supposed to be a news site. Maybe CNN and Fox don't worry about showing their bias, but that doesn't make it right, and it'd be nice if there were slightly higher standards here.
Also, in this case specifically, the "didn't make enough money" comment is just plain stupid, not to mention irrelevant. Is it legal to commit crimes against the wealthy now? Or maybe there's a new law saying you can only make so much money? What does it even mean to make too much money, and who are you to make the determination?
Not really what I expect from a highly over-paid lawyer. ;-)
Parent
Re:What does her wealth have to do with it? (Score:5, Informative)
Not only that, but Ms. Rowling explicitly said that she had no objection if the Lexicon continues to be published for free on the web.
It's really, really hard for me to get worked up over this.
Parent
Re:What does her wealth have to do with it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly,
And the fact that the judgment wasn't for more that about 6,750 bucks goes to show that this was about principle, not the money.
The submission's author's bias, coupled with someone tagging the article with "greed" is just disgusting.
Mod Parent up +115
Parent
Re:What does her wealth have to do with it? (Score:5, Interesting)
They are far from irrelevant if you listen to those arguing for extending copyright laws. They cite the need of creators to earn a living from their work. Here [arstechnica.com] is EU Commissioner McCreevy arguing for term extension: "Copyright represents a moral right of the performer to control the use of his work and earn a living from his performance." Then it's perfectly reasonable to argue that this purpose of the law has already been fulfilled.
More importantly, the law is meant to serve us, not the other way around. We have every business talking about what the law should be, not only what it is. Laws are created and changed by our elected representatives. Limiting one's vision to the letter of the law is infantile and irresponsible for a citizen in a democracy.
Whether our representatives really represent us is a different matter. They certainly won't if we treat their actions - including legislation - as beyond criticism.
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Re:What does her wealth have to do with it? (Score:5, Informative)
That is true when it comes to trademark protection and patent protection, but NOT copyright protection.
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Re:What does her wealth have to do with it? (Score:5, Informative)
You're confusing 'standing to sue' with 'losing a trademark'.
In the U.S. (and probably in the U.K., too), if you become financially damaged in a given situation, and you knowingly allowed that situation to occur, you lose your standing to sue by failing to mitigate your own damages. This is called the 'doctrine of laches [wikipedia.org]' and is a form of estoppel.
Parent
Hold your horses! (Score:5, Informative)
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Back up a moment! NewYorkCountryLawyer, I normally respect your posts, but this one is in need of some serious scrutiny.
As it happens, I was listening to the details of the case this morning on NPR. The problem with this specific book is not that it focuses on the Harry Potter series. The problem is that nearly every description was lifted from the books in a reasonably clear case of plagerism and/or derivitive works. Most reference books contain unique descriptions and commentary above and beyond the information presented in the source material. However, this particular lexicon made no effort to add such value over the books themselves.
In effect, it was merely a reorganization of J.K. Rowling's books into a dry reference. Something for which only the author has a legal right to grant.
THAT is why the judge found against the lexicon. And he did so with a strong warning that this book is an exception to the usually legal practice:
Re:Hold your horses! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Hold your horses! (Score:5, Informative)
Bingo. Coppying excerpts for purposes of ccommentary and criticism of a work is generally an acceptable practice that is considered fair use. Compiling a bunch of excerpts and publishing them as a lexicon without adding anything original and of value is a clear case of infringement.
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Link to NPR Audio (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94407484 [npr.org]
Parent
Re:Hold your horses! (Score:5, Insightful)
You hinged your argument on the wrong part of that sentence. "Dry reference" is not illegal, nor is it the judge's words. "Reorganized", however, IS illegal when we are speaking about copyrighted works. That is what the judge found against.
Hardly. The lexicon was read aloud in court, along with the source material it pulled from. The book was a clear case of plagiarism to the court. The publisher can feel free to appeal the decision, but I doubt they'll find much sympathy from an appeals judge.
The crux of your defense appears to be that a website previously existed that Rowling was happy with. Yet one has to be clear on one aspect here: There is a large gulf between publishing large pieces of someone's work for a no-cost reference and publishing someone else's work for profit. The defendant may have had a website that Rowling was happy with and thus not inclined to take legal action against (effectively giving approval for the use), but the book should have either added significantly more value over the source material OR have sought approval from the Rowling before attempting to go to press.
FWIW, PJ does an excellent job in reaching the same conclusion in her Groklaw post. Kudos to kdawson for adding that useful link to balance out an otherwise defamatory post.
Parent
Just like the books... (Score:5, Funny)
Avada Kedavra!
Thanks, NewYorkCountryLawyer! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Thanks, NewYorkCountryLawyer! (Score:5, Funny)
I noticed you accidently wrote at least one sentence that doesn't totally drip with contempt for this ruling.
Dammit. Sorry about that. I don't know how I let that slip through.
Parent
Erm...What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why the bad attitude in the submission post?
Someone was trying to release a commercial product whose premise was stealing content from an established work.
If they didn't get hit hard on copyright infringement, they'd get hit hard on trademark infringement, and rightly so.
Like it nor not, J. K. Rowling created the series, and decided to turn it into a commercial enterprise. It's well within her moral and legal rights to make sure a bunch of idiots don't cling to her coattails trying to milk dollars from a popular franchise that they have no legitimate claim to.
Re:Erm...What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Like it nor not, J. K. Rowling created the series, and decided to turn it into a commercial enterprise. It's well within her moral and legal rights to make sure a bunch of idiots don't cling to her coattails trying to milk dollars from a popular franchise that they have no legitimate claim to.
Well, the judge seems to think there's room for at least some idiots to cling to her coattails and milk dollars from a franchise they have no legitimate claim to. From Groklaw:
Notwithstanding Rowling's public statements of her intention to publish her own encyclopedia, the market for reference guides to the Harry Potter works is not exclusively hers to exploit or license, no matter the commercial success attributable to the popularity of the original works. See Twin Peaks, 996 F.2d at 1377 ("The author of 'Twin Peaks' cannot preserve for itself the entire field of publishable works that wish to cash in on the 'Twin Peaks' phenomenon"). The market for reference guides does not become derivative simply because the copyright holder seeks to produce or license one.
I.e., no, it's not within her legal rights to prevent other people from making money off her work. There are reasons for why this case wasn't fair use, but that doesn't speak to the issue of people riding her wave as a whole.
Parent
Amazingly slanted summary (Score:5, Informative)
The lawsuit was to stop the publication of the book; it had nothing to do with the $6k.
Ok, let's look at this clearly (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Poor Harry... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's typical to show contempt for those artists you consider crass or over-commercialized, by depicting them as metaphorically abusing their creations.
For example, Bill Watterson (of Calvin and Hobbes) famously sent Berkeley Breathed (of Bloom County) a comic of Breathed laughing in a powerboat and whipping Opus the penguin, who was frantically shoveling sackfuls of cash into the outboard motor. (I wish I could find this online, it's in one of the collections of C&H.) I don't think he even bothered with Jim Davis, who is beyond parody as a commercial artist.
All artists have a connection to their work; some establish the connection primarily to make money. I don't know where J.K. stands.
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Re:Poor Harry... (Score:5, Informative)
Copyright is not trademark. You don't have to defend copyright to keep it.
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