Harry Potter and the silly case of copyright
And yes, I can call it that. Even the judge seems to think this is all faintly ridiculous.
As I long suspected, I've fallen on the side of Steve Vander Ark and not JKR.
I really enjoyed this article in the Guardian, so here are some of my favourite bit...
"I believe the floodgates will open," she said this week, as though this sort of fan ( Read more... )
As I long suspected, I've fallen on the side of Steve Vander Ark and not JKR.
I really enjoyed this article in the Guardian, so here are some of my favourite bit...
"I believe the floodgates will open," she said this week, as though this sort of fan ( Read more... )
I just...it seems to me that she's setting a double standard and that her objections to it stem more from she does like it than from any actual legal reasons.
Even the money thing doesn't seem credible to me, because, do you know now many books a writer has to sell to actually get a decent return? A lot more than 10,000 which is what SVA's first run is supposed to be.
He's not pretending it's something he's created and there are already books out there doing what he's going to do, only they are incomplete because they've been written before book seven.
And the bit where she broke down and cried, saying how much she loved and treasured her characters and she can't stand this abuse of them?
Yeah, right. That's why there is so much merchandise with the HP characters on it. That's why there is a Harry Potter themem park in the works.
And if you are that protective of your characters, you don't let anyone play with them. Ever. Even online.
And her biggest peeve seems to be that it's sloppily written. Well, if it is, so what? That's not a reason for you to stop it being published, it just means not may people will buy it.
And does she (or anyone) really think that if he writes an A-Z no-one will buy hers? Please, as if. It'll hit the number one stop in about 2 minutes flat.
Even the judge seems to be saying, 'please, settle this out of court because it's a huge waste of time.'
If someone was pretending that a novel they'd written which was basically HP with different names, then yeah, sue their pants off. They shouldn't be doing that. But this just seems too near the definition of transformative works to be a case of copyright.
Be much easier to decide if a copy of his proposed book would turn up somewhere.
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