Rant rant rant rant!
Sep. 9th, 2008 01:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sparkindarknessBack in the days of yore I posted this rant:
http://sparkindarkness.livejournal.com/193053.html
About the Harry Potter “lexicon” that was being published. Well now we have a judgement and the judgement has basically been “bitch please!” and slapped the idiot several times, prevented him from publishing. Good. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2008/09/08/entertainment/e103149D92.DTL
http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/potterdecision.pdf (actual judgement. It’s long and boring :P)
But it seems even more foolish than I thought. Huge screeds of the books are copied without even quotation marks, let alone references! Where it isn’t a direct clone it follows so closely it may as well have just been a copy and paste. In fact, the content of her 2 companion books (Fantastic Beasts and Quidditch through the Ages) appears to have been all but copied word-for-word cover-to-cover. Ye gods, in what possible universe is this considered even remotely acceptable? Seriously who copies out vast sections of a book’s plot, including the exact words without accreditation and then assumes that that’s perfectly ok?
But still he has defenders. It’s ridiculous some of the things that have been said in his defence:
“He spent untold thousands of hours working on it!”
And? I spend hours on WoW. I dare not say how many. There are series of books I have read dozens of times. There are thousands if not millions of people out there who have spent countless hours writing fanfiction, fansites etc about a whole range of books, programmes, games. Yet I wouldn’t dream of ripping off the content of any of these products I have devoted hours to and trying to make money from it.
This is something the creators have given us, the fans, not something we have given them! They have given us thousands of hours of entertainment, they have provided us with something we value so much that we spend hours revelling in it. The idea that the time we devote to our hobbies somehow gives us a proprietary right over them - and a right over the intellectual property and to ignore copyright is ludicrous. If anything the debt flows the other way (recognised by the fact we pay MONEY for these books) because they have given us something that enriches our lives.
“But he loves the books so much!”
Again, this is like the last point. So he loves them. So he is dedicated to them. So he is unhealthily obsessed by them. SO WHAT? I speak as someone who is renown for their unhealthy obsessions - but I know that my obsession gives me no rights or control over the thing I obsess about. This is as ridiculous as fanfic writers who accuse the author of writing their characters wrong (and yes, nutcases like that do exist!) Because they are the BIGGEST FAN EVAH means that the object of their crazy obsession is somehow THEIRS? Yes, well, that’s crazy stalkerish behaviour when applied to people and just plain crazy the rest of the time.
“But she has so much money!”
And? I fail to see why her wealth is relevant here. In fact, I think it’s utterly irrelevent - it’s a matter of principle and violation. No matter how rich you are, no-one likes having their property taken. And that applies doubly when it’s their own artistic creation. When you have created something it is outrageous when someone else takes it, profits from it or presents it as their own work. It’s not a matter of “I want more money” it’s a matter of “what right does he have to do this to me and mine?”
“She didn’t complain about the internet lexicon!”
C’mon, be serious here. First of all controlling web content is crazy and nigh impossible at the best of times. But surely someone can see a difference between writing a fannish guide on the web and selling it for profit? 90% of the people who write fanfiction KNOW it’s crossing a line when you actually try to profit off it. It is frankly beyond belief that anyone cannot see the difference between selling the book for profit and maintaining a fansite.
Frankly, I think this guy got exactly what he deserved - and he knew it was coming, that’s why his contract with his publisher indemnified him against any damages from copyright violation. he knew it was going to happen and if JKR took notice he would be slapped. He doesn’t get to complain when the inevitable slapping happens
http://sparkindarkness.livejournal.com/193053.html
About the Harry Potter “lexicon” that was being published. Well now we have a judgement and the judgement has basically been “bitch please!” and slapped the idiot several times, prevented him from publishing. Good. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2008/09/08/entertainment/e103149D92.DTL
http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/potterdecision.pdf (actual judgement. It’s long and boring :P)
But it seems even more foolish than I thought. Huge screeds of the books are copied without even quotation marks, let alone references! Where it isn’t a direct clone it follows so closely it may as well have just been a copy and paste. In fact, the content of her 2 companion books (Fantastic Beasts and Quidditch through the Ages) appears to have been all but copied word-for-word cover-to-cover. Ye gods, in what possible universe is this considered even remotely acceptable? Seriously who copies out vast sections of a book’s plot, including the exact words without accreditation and then assumes that that’s perfectly ok?
But still he has defenders. It’s ridiculous some of the things that have been said in his defence:
“He spent untold thousands of hours working on it!”
And? I spend hours on WoW. I dare not say how many. There are series of books I have read dozens of times. There are thousands if not millions of people out there who have spent countless hours writing fanfiction, fansites etc about a whole range of books, programmes, games. Yet I wouldn’t dream of ripping off the content of any of these products I have devoted hours to and trying to make money from it.
This is something the creators have given us, the fans, not something we have given them! They have given us thousands of hours of entertainment, they have provided us with something we value so much that we spend hours revelling in it. The idea that the time we devote to our hobbies somehow gives us a proprietary right over them - and a right over the intellectual property and to ignore copyright is ludicrous. If anything the debt flows the other way (recognised by the fact we pay MONEY for these books) because they have given us something that enriches our lives.
“But he loves the books so much!”
Again, this is like the last point. So he loves them. So he is dedicated to them. So he is unhealthily obsessed by them. SO WHAT? I speak as someone who is renown for their unhealthy obsessions - but I know that my obsession gives me no rights or control over the thing I obsess about. This is as ridiculous as fanfic writers who accuse the author of writing their characters wrong (and yes, nutcases like that do exist!) Because they are the BIGGEST FAN EVAH means that the object of their crazy obsession is somehow THEIRS? Yes, well, that’s crazy stalkerish behaviour when applied to people and just plain crazy the rest of the time.
“But she has so much money!”
And? I fail to see why her wealth is relevant here. In fact, I think it’s utterly irrelevent - it’s a matter of principle and violation. No matter how rich you are, no-one likes having their property taken. And that applies doubly when it’s their own artistic creation. When you have created something it is outrageous when someone else takes it, profits from it or presents it as their own work. It’s not a matter of “I want more money” it’s a matter of “what right does he have to do this to me and mine?”
“She didn’t complain about the internet lexicon!”
C’mon, be serious here. First of all controlling web content is crazy and nigh impossible at the best of times. But surely someone can see a difference between writing a fannish guide on the web and selling it for profit? 90% of the people who write fanfiction KNOW it’s crossing a line when you actually try to profit off it. It is frankly beyond belief that anyone cannot see the difference between selling the book for profit and maintaining a fansite.
Frankly, I think this guy got exactly what he deserved - and he knew it was coming, that’s why his contract with his publisher indemnified him against any damages from copyright violation. he knew it was going to happen and if JKR took notice he would be slapped. He doesn’t get to complain when the inevitable slapping happens
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(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-09 01:48 pm (UTC)I'm glad to see he got slapped with the appropriate haddocks, and also glad that he's not going to be liable for damages. It looks like he knew that this was a bad idea from the word 'go', and was willing to let the publisher take the hit when the inevitable occurred.
What really blows my mind is how the publisher's legal department ever thought this was a good idea.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-11 04:53 pm (UTC)Research of the kind I did in grades 6-10 was almost never creating original information. We always relied on work done by others, often from tertiary sources like encyclopedias. I certainly couldn't have written the paper on tigers that I did in grade 8 if I'd had to do original research first.
However, one of the huge things the teachers kept pounding into our heads was the necessity of reading the source report/article/book, whatever, and REPHRASING or REWORDING. This, by the way, is basically how any encyclopedia works, such as wikipedia. Use information from secondary sources, digest it all, and assemble it together with references to original sources of facts but with minimal use of original wording.
I don't need to cut n' paste from the original fiction to describe the known facts about "house elves", for instance. I won't need to make up any new facts about them to do it, either.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-12 08:51 pm (UTC)Boggart: Magical creature. Hides in enclosed people and has the ability to assume the form (and apparent powers) of what you fear most.
I may add an appropriate, short, cited book reference or just a (see pg X)
I would NOT copy verbatim Rowling's entire description of it, which is what the Lexicon appears to have done.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-12 08:49 pm (UTC)Well the publisher indemnified him because he did have reservations and basically they poked him into it.
I can still see why they did it. They were banking on Rowling not caring/not noticing/not wanting the bad press a court case would bring. I mean, as the article I linked in my previous post makes clear, some people are actually outraged at her for objecting! If she hadn't bothered then it would have been worth coining it in