Warner Bros. Still Cutting Off Harry Potter’s Nose To Spite His Face
from the no-fun-zone dept
It shouldn’t be news to any regular readers here that Warner Bros. has been a ridiculously jealous protector of all things intellectual property when it comes to the Harry Potter franchise. Harry Potter themed fan festivals? That’s banned magic, according to Warner Bros. Want to make a parody condom called “Harry Poppers”? Here comes Warner Bros. to kill the mood. A non-profit dinner with a Harry Potter theme, mostly to make a mother’s daughter happy? The Warner Bros. did its dementor thing to shut down all that joy.
Now, what should be obvious in all of those examples is that this all works against the interests of Warner Bros., the publishers of the books, and J.K. Rowling. After all, does anyone really believe that these fans showing off their fandom, gathering to celebrate the Harry Potter franchise, in any way is a threat to sales of these books and movies? Of course not! If anything, they build upon the Potter community and serve as an interest multiplier that can’t possibly do anything but drive more interest in the books and films.
Like a library that put together a Harry Potter program for children, only to have it threatened out of existence by Warner Bros.
It’s a sad day for little witches and wizards in Jackson Hole. The Teton County Library’s (TCL) slate of Harry Potter programming has been canceled due to copyright infringement. TCL announced the news on Wednesday, Oct. 2. TCL said it had received a cease-and-desist letter from Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., which owns and controls all things Potter.
“Prior to receiving the letter, Library staff was unaware that this free educational event was a copyright infringement,” TCL’s announcement reads. “In the past, libraries had been encouraged to hold Harry Potter-themed events to promote the books as they were released.”
While other festivals have attempted to rebrand to generic names and themes to get around all of this, the library in this case isn’t bothering. It’s just shutting the whole thing down. And while the library is making conciliatory noises about respecting the intellectual property of others, this is completely idiotic.
Precisely what about a library building some programming around children’s love for Harry Potter represents any kind of threat whatsoever to Warner Bros.? I’ll wait, while someone tries deperately to grasp enough straws to formulate an argument for this. But really, don’t bother. This is protectionism for the sake of protectionism.
And it’s incredibly shortsighted to boot. The fans who grew to love the Harry Potter universe have grown up and now have children of their own. And that new generation could be loyal Potter fans too, if Warner Bros. would let them. Instead, the company appears far more interested in shutting down what are essentially entry points of interest for an entire new generation of potential fans and customers.
It appears Harry Potter will no longer have a nose, with Warner Bros. having cut it off to spite his face.
Filed Under: copyright, culture, fair use, harry potter, kids, learning
Companies: teton county library, warner bros. discovery
Comments on “Warner Bros. Still Cutting Off Harry Potter’s Nose To Spite His Face”
With all the bad publicity that JK Rowling has provided, when is WB going to sue her? She has done more damage to their IP than anything else.
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How do you get a big media company to shoot itself in the foot?
Read the article again if you have any questions.
Re:
That’s easy. You don’t even need a magic wand to invoke “Copyrightus maximus”.
Re: Re:
No, no, no. The correct incantation is ‘Copyrightus trollus maximus’.
Theres a spell for this purpose.
Expecto Fuck-Warnum
Given that this is clearly bad for JK Rowling, at the end of the day I’m chill with it.
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That’s like cheering on the cancellation of a museums Picasso exhibit because of his extramarital affairs
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It’s definitely a case of mixed feelings. While I hate companies doing this as a general principle, here it’s anything that pushes people away and keeps money out of Rowling’s bigotry fund is only ever a good thing.
Re: Re:
Then running your own Harry Potter themed event should be cause for celebration. You’re not going to make her any wealthier for a celebration held many miles away from where she lives, and we don’t need to make Warner Bros any wealthier either.
I remember when I saw that shield, it made me think of great movies, awesome TV series, and the 90s cartoons that defined my childhood. Now, David Zaslav has just ruined WB for so many people…
Re: Re: Re: potter themed event considered harmful
The problem is that you may well be making her, or WB, wealthier; When you have such an event, you are promoting the Potter brand. You increase interest in the books and movies, while not offering anything that competes with Rowling or her licensees in any way. For them, it is free advertising.
Fortunately, WB are happy to discourage interest in the Potter books and movies. That may eventually have noticable effect on the revenue streams.
The game that shall not be named of the book world
Except, it's not
A “free educational event” at a library is not copyright infringement.
And Warner almost certainly knows this, but was counting on the legal threats by the Big Bad Company to bully the small-town library anyway.
Re: Except, it's not
And, what’s the point.
We all know that they can do this (they’ve done it often enough). Getting the next generation hooked on your product would be considered a good thing. So, why shut it down?
Re: Re: If we can't have any, neither shall you!
At this point, Warner knows that they will not make much in additional sales because of this library initiative. After all, everybody already knows about the franchise and it’s a library that will let the children read the books for free!
Might as well spoil their initiative and not let them (or the attending children) have any benefits from it either…
Re: Re: Re:
WB wouldn’t be making anything in sales, period. The company doesn’t own Bloomsbury Publishing, the Scholastic
Corporation, or Allen & Unwin, which are the three main publishers of the Harry Potter series in English. Maybe that’s why they’re doing this; they’re trying to establish ‘rights’ they don’t actually have in law.
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Small town libraries can’t afford to carry the court costs, even if they win in the end.
(Isn’t this what anti-SLAPP law is for?)
The library should publicly say that they will no longer carry anything Harry Potter and tell everyone exactly why.
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If libraries decided not to fund copyright maximalists, they’d be pretty empty. And the maximalists would probably appreciate that.
Re: Re:
Well, right until the massive opportunity resulted in publishers and/or authors that weren’t blithering, greed-fueled idiots stepped in to fill the gaps by donating/selling their books to libraries under sane terms.
Re: Re: Re:
Yeah. There are plenty of authors who are more than happy to have their works available in libraries.
And honestly: the set of works that are (or should be) in the public domain in the US is large enough that when combined with the output of sane(r) authors, I doubt the presence or absence of the works of modern copyright maximalists make much of a different[0].
[0] In volume or quality. Popularity how is a weird thing, and out of scope.
Re: Re: Re:2
What? We’re not talking about authors (e.g., Rowling allows fan fiction), we’re talking about publishers. They’re essentially all maximalists.
Hachette Book Group, Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, and Wiley are all suing the Internet Archive. Probably a quarter or a third of a library would be gone just by getting rid of their stuff. The Association of American Publishers has publically “celebrated” the opinion, so you’d also have to get rid of anything by their members.
I’m guessing at least 90% of stuff would be gone, however you measure it. I’m not sure you’d have much left apart from pre-1929 public domain books, plus those pre-1997 books O’Reilly has released under “Founder’s Copyright”.
Re: Re: Re:3
Somehow, I can’t see either JK Rowling or her publisher(s) doing the right thing here…
I certainly can’t see Rowling following the example of Nora Roberts on this (even though in Rowling’s case, it wouldn’t even cost her a dime):
https://lithub.com/nora-roberts-has-pitched-in-25000-to-save-another-library-at-risk/
There are specific exceptions to the copyright law that allow public libraries to host these types of events. It is sad that the local librarian/library board doesn’t know this. I hope someone from ALA (the American Library Association) can reach out and advise them on how to stand up to the corporate bullies and defend their rights in order to serve their community.
Warner bros is just joining Nintendo in hating their own fans and supporters
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No, they’re not. They first joined Nintendo in that in the 2000s.
'Oh we don't promote those books anymore, too risky. Here's a bunch of other books instead...'
Threatening a library is certainly a terrible thing to do but if Warner Bros is going to engage in some legal thuggery due to short-sighted greed reducing the odds of new readers picking up and potentially buying any of the Harry Potter books because libraries don’t want anything to do with would at least have some silver lining.
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Yup. Kids are already avoiding the Potter books. None of my kid’s friends read it. They just don’t care.
WB should be terrified that their cash cow is losing interest as a cultural touchstone.
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Well, the fact that Joanne is an outspoken bigot and is just plain weird is probably a big part of it.
Here’s hoping they help Harry Potter die like it should. The next generation deserves better.
Re: Well, that's the point!
Rowland does not write significant new Harry Potter stuff. And the Potter fans don’t buy the old stuff because they already did.
So Warner is strangling the Potter universe to make mindspace for something new that can deliver more.
Egg-laying chicken get killed with their first molt. Not because they would not return to egg-laying but because the expected return from feeding a fresh chicken instead in the same place is better.
That’s why record labels may choose to put artists under long-term contracts just to stop any promotion or production.
Re: Re:
Actually, there are still some fanfic authors writing new Harry Potter stories all the time. Or did you mean Rowling?
Re: Re: Re:
My mistake. Too much “Vanity Fair” I guess. And to make matters worse for Warner, I never watched any movie adaptation, so at least concerning me, all the money they paid Thackeray for the movie rights was a bad investment.
Wait, that wasn’t Rowland either but Rawdon Crawley. At least all the letters are there.
Who’s Rowland?
Re: Re: Re:2
Nobody knows. You’re the one first used the name.
Re: Re: Re:
Oh damn! there goes my dream of making it big with the fan-fic “Harry Potter and the Horror Potty”! About living with a wizardly child with tantrum problems …
Wow, this is patently idiotic. You want to encourage actions that help people get into a fandom, and this is not the way to do that. Idiots.
Though, really, any bad publicity for this overrated series with a ghoulish publisher and a bigoted author is good.
Are you still waiting?
Doesn't Rowling own the copyright on Harry Potter?
Not Warner Bros.
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WB owns the copyright on the movies, which they would argue gives them a right to ban events based on the books.
Harry Potter books were an important part of my life when I developed depression. It took me 10 years to get it diagnosed but HP was there in part of the way giving me comfort.
This kind of asshole behavior towards the fans and the overall shitty personality of the writer (the transphobia and all) turned me off from the whole HP world. Sadly.
With all the bad publicity that JK Rowling has provided, when is WB going to sue her? She has done more damage to their IP than anything else.
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It’s kind of an American myth that you can sue for any damage. That only holds as long as someone is legally culpable, and certainly Rowling has all the right in the world to look bad.
I think the character who doesn’t have a nose is named Voldemort.
HPMOR
Maybe the library should contact Elezier Yudkowsky, author of the excellent ‘Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality’ fanfic (available for free on hpmor.com).
I bet they will be much more inclined to support a library event 🙂