Steve, you've done such a nice job making this bed, with Sleazeball sheets and Assclown pillows, and this warm Treacherous Lying Bastard blanket. Guess what? Now you get to lie in it. Sweet dreams.
This is in reference to Steve Vander Ark crying today during the copyright infringement trial over the Harry Potter Lexicon. SVA has run the Lexicon website for years, then decided to publish said website as an actual book. JRK said no, they sent out C&Rs to no avail, and have finally had to sue the publishing company over it. It's hilariously funny, and what I read about while the kids were working quietly today.
I literally woke up this morning and thought, "Today is Wednesday which means tomorrow is Thursday which means new Office and CSI!" So sad.
7 comments:
Okay, I have been following this too, and while I can see where Vander Ark's actions are questionable and this publishing company is probably in the wrong, DUDES, J.K. Rowling's melodramatic comments during this trial? Have me totally grossed out.
Lady, you are a billionaire. I have no sympathy for you if you have lost the will to write because of this. Like, seriously. Her comments while testifying are beyond ridiculous.
Oh, I don't think so at all. SVA was someone she gave a fricking fan award to, at one point. She's talked in interviews about how she'd sometimes check the Lexicon instead of grabbing HER OWN BOOK while she was writing. When he asked her if he could publish the site, she told him politely, no, she was going to do her own encyclopedia. Probably thinking that this guy would actually respect her wishes. And now this.
I mean, she's been dealing with this for a year, I think? At least. She's having to fly over here and testify, and deal with the publicity, and I can totally understand if this has sapped her will to write her own encyclopedia, having to deal with this guy pawning off her own words (seriously, like 95% of the Lexicon is just her words, unattributed and unquoted, rearranged and alphabetized) and just not letting go.
The thing is, if she doesn't defend her copyright, and if WB doesn't protect its trademark, and they don't stop this, then they're opening the door to anyone profiting off her work. And yeah, she's super rich now, but she wasn't always. I think she said something like if she'd known when she was choosing between food and a typewriter ribbon that there was a possibility that someone else would profit off of her work, she might have reconsidered.
Oh, this is so tl;dr. Anyway, I just find myself sympathizing with her so much; I'm sure this has been totally stressful, and honestly, I don't think this is about the money at all. She's protecting her work. It's hers, she did it, so why should someone else get to claim credit? RDR's attorney was trying to get her to admit that there was some validity to having the Lexicon out there in print form while she was on the stand. He kept hammering about how much work SVA had put into the site, how many years he'd worked on it, and her response?
"Yes, it was a lot of work. I remember doing it."
Yeah, I mean, I'm well aware that Rowling came from nothing, and also know how attached she is to this universe. I do think, though, that the way this is being portrayed is not exactly showing her in a very flattering light.
It's kind of like when David Duchovny sued the Fox Network for more money off XF reruns. I mean, he was very probably justified, but it still comes off in a sort of less than flattering light, you know what I mean?
And funny enough, her reference to her will to write being sapped wasn't referring to her encyclopedia--it was in reference to some other children's book she's working on, apparently.
Mostly, where I'm kind of tied up here, is how far they plan to take this concept of no one other than Rowling being able to have a hand in a series guide. Because if you do a search on Amazon, there are tons and tons and tons of unofficial guides to Harry Potter, etc, etc. (I own two such books, actually.) How do they successfully argue that this guy's is worse than any of the other stuff that's out there?
I don't know, I mean, I agree that it's Rowling's universe, and agree that he probably should've just let it be when she asked him not to publish, but...I just can't see where this is really THAT much different from anything that's come before.
Also, there's nothing that woman could publish that people wouldn't immediately buy, so I don't really think the argument that SVA's encyclopedia would cut into her own sales holds any real water. This really doesn't matter as far as copyright infringement is concerned, I'm just saying.
I don't know, now *I've* gone very tl;dr, but it's like, even though I think SVR and his publishers are in the wrong, I'm also not at all sympathetic to Rowling at the very same time.
The thing is, the Lexicon isn't an actual Lexicon, or a compendium, or even an unofficial encyclopedia. Because those things do exist in the HP universe. It is literally JKR's own words, unattributed, just rearranged and alphabetized. He hasn't done anything with her work; there is no scholarly analysis, there's nothing original. It's just her words, that he's trying to claim credit for. Why wouldn't you try to stop that?
I guess I just think that ownership is ownership. It doesn't matter how much money you have, you have a right to your own work, for that work to not be stolen, and to be fairly compensated for that work. Hell, Peter Jackson made a ton of money off LOTR, but New Line still tried to screw him over, and yeah, he took them to court/arbitrator/something over it. I guess it's one of those principle-of-the-things. And JKR did say that this entire thing has made her less inclined to go through the process of writing her own encyclopedia in the future as well as effect her work now, so it's like a double whammy.
I don't know, maybe it's because I'm in a creative field, but I just don't like the idea that you lose control of your work just because you have a lot of money. At the end of the day, it's her work, and if she's okay with an unofficial fan guide but not a copy-pasta encyclopedia, that's her call to make.
Well, I haven't actually investigated the content of the book he was aiming to publish, and have only a vague knowledge of what the Lexicon, as a website, functioned as.
Mostly, I just remember Vander Ark as being a pretty intense fan, and a fan who was actually invited to some movie sets to help them with timelines and stuff.
I agree that the amount of money you have doesn't have any bearing on your rights to your work. I suppose that for me, I just am not following this hard enough to know what the actual content of his book was to be (in that it's copy/pasted passages, I figured it was just like, a timeline/guide thing).
Regardless of my opinions on the matter, I do think that J.K. Rowling is coming off as unsympathetic to the general public. Harry Potter fans are kind of on her side of course, but non-fans, I don't know. Everyone was talking about this at clinic today, and everyone was kind of slamming her. I'm not saying it's justified, because a lot of it isn't. But I think the problem is that for some reason, instead of this coming across as a "my content" issue, it's being broadcast as a "my money" issue, which is kind of unfair to everyone involved.
Either way, I just still think it gets sticky, because it then becomes an issue--at least for me--about why some guides are okay and others aren't. One of the guides I own is pretty darn quote-heavy of her work, and again, I'm just tied up in wondering why this Lexicon, why this guy, why now, when there were so many past targets?
Yeah, I've been following it on Fandom Wank for months. I mean, a really long time, I thought they'd never get to trial.
http://www.journalfen.net/community/fandom_wank/1150952.html#cutid1
The posts do a pretty good job of linking to all the relevant news stories, and have quite a bit of actual commentary instead of the usual pointing and laughing. There's a pie chart that JKR's lawyers made that shows how much is SVA's own words versus what comes directly from the books.
What makes it so wanky is that SVA WAS a BNF, was very popular. and he's kind of screwed the pooch, you know.
I think the problem with the media is that they're obviously going to report on the story in the most salacious way possible. An actual story about copyright and trademark isn't interesting. A billionaire author crying because some fan wants to play in her sandbox and she's just being a big ol' meanie is a much more intriguing tack. Which is unfair, as far as I'm concerned, but it's nothing new.
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