Fan Fiction Author Charged With Obscenity In The UK

Wed, Aug 6th 2008 10:34am

Filed Under:
authors, community, fan fiction, jk rowling, stephenie meyer, twilight vampire

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Another Author Shows JK Rowling How To Embrace Fans

from the don't-sue-them,-for-starters dept

We covered the ridiculous lawsuit that JK Rowling had filed against a fan who created a reference book, The Harry Potter Lexicon to supplement her massively popular novels. At the actual trial, it appeared that Rowling didn't have much of a legal argument against the publication, so she went for an emotional argument that can be summed up as: she just didn't like it.

Contrast that to situation around author Stephenie Meyer and her Twilight Vampire books (as pointed out by Against Monopoly). Meyer actively embraced the fan community as much as impossible -- including encouraging fans to create a comparable Twilight Lexicon reference guide, Meyer not only was thrilled, she helped fill in some characters' back stories. And, it's worked. The community has responded to her and become huge evangelists for the series and everything associated with it. These days, if your fans want to help advertise your works for you, it seems pretty backwards to then sue them for it. Nice to see that other successful authors aren't following Rowling's awful lead.

Legal Issues

Tue, Jan 15th 2008 12:22pm

Filed Under:
copyright, fan fiction, harry potter, j.k. rowling

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Why J.K. Rowling Shouldn't Get To Prevent Harry Potter Guidebook Publication

from the copyright-doesn't-let-you-control-everything dept

We've covered in the past J.K. Rowling's attempts to claim that copyright gives her more rights than it actually does, especially with regards to fan fiction. However, Rowling's latest attempt is to try to prevent the publication of "The Harry Potter Lexicon," a fan-created reference book to all things having to do with the world found in the Harry Potter books. Law professor Tim Wu does a nice job explaining why Rowling's claim goes beyond the limitations of copyright law, which does not prevent someone else from creating a guidebook of information about characters you created. As long as the guidebook creators are not copying Rowling's words verbatim, but are merely creating a guide or a critique of Rowling's work, it's not a copyright issue. Rowling's real problem with the guidebook appears to be a different issue. She had no problem when the Lexicon was just a fan website. However, when they wanted to sell a book, she became upset. So the real problem appears to be that she doesn't want anyone else to make any money -- but that's not what copyright law is designed to do. Newspapers make money off of books all the time by publishing reviews, and we all know that's legal. There is no difference in creating a reference book.

Rowling complains that this work will make it difficult for her to publish her own guidebook: "I cannot approve of 'companion books' or 'encyclopedias' that seek to preempt my definitive Potter reference book...." However, as Wu notes, that's silly and has nothing to do with copyright law: "two products in the same market isn't called pre-emption—the word is competition." And, generally, competition is something that we should encourage, as it drives all competitors to provide better products. If Rowling really believes she cannot compete with a fan reference guide, that's hardly the fault of the other reference guide. Given the interest in Harry Potter, it's hard to believe that an "official" reference guide given Rowling's endorsement wouldn't outsell any fan-created version.

Legal Issues

Tue, Nov 6th 2007 7:20pm

Filed Under:
copyright law, fan fiction

Companies:
warhammer

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Did German Copyright Law Really Kill A Fan Fiction Film?

from the time-to-update-your-laws dept

The concept of "fan fiction" represents an interesting challenge for copyright law. Most copyright laws don't take into account the idea of fans creating new works involving characters or worlds that they like -- as such a thing just wasn't practical until recently. However, thanks to the rise of tools that make the creation of creative works easier than ever before, it's become a bigger and bigger question. In Germany, the problem has been highlighted by fans of the board game Warhammer 40,000 who spent time and money to create a fan film based on the game. Unfortunately, thanks to German copyright law, the film can not be shown. Apparently, they can't just say it's okay without losing all rights to the Warhammer brand. Basically, according to the article the company can assign the copyright to another party, but it's a complete assignment, meaning that the game maker no longer has those rights any more. This sounds quite strange, as it's hard to see how any copyright law (or trademark law) would function properly if you can't license things selectively for specific purposes. The gamemaker apparently feels bad about the result, and doesn't seem to mind the idea of the fan film, but claims that under the law, it can't allow the film to proceed. This seems to clearly go against the very point of copyright law, which shouldn't require the holder of a copyright to ban its use in other cases. If there's someone out there who can explain the specifics of German copyright law, that would be great -- as the story doesn't make much sense. Can there really be no licensing of content without assigning the entire copyright? If that's truly the case, then hopefully people will realize it's time to update copyright law to take into account our more modern communications infrastructure. Update: In the comments someone with a familiarity in German copyright law suggests that the company needs to find a new copyright lawyer -- as it should be able to allow this movie to go forward.

Too Much Free Time

Thu, Aug 2nd 2007 5:32pm

Filed Under:
copyright, fan fiction, harry potter