Stanford University Law Schools' Center for the Internet and Society was on the side of the publisher who wanted to issue a lexicon of the convoluted--and mainly stolen from the writings of antiquity--universe in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. A judge in New York City has now put another nail in the coffin of free speech and free enterprise in the United States. In addition, while avowing the opposite, his knee-jerk (and I'm being kind here) decision has put the screws to most commercial criticism, the kind real people and not just academics, might actually buy and read.
The judge, Robert Patterson, said that the RDR "Lexicon appropriates too much of Rowling's creative work for its purposes as a reference guide". And he, I suppose, is the ultimate arbiter of how much is too much.
Even Rowling apparently has trouble with that concept. In 2004, Rowling herself had awarded the website on which the pre-empted lexicon was based an award for excellence. Worse yet, Rowling herself admitted that part of her reason for bringing suit (aided and abetted by Warner Brothers) was that now the author and publisher wanted to make money. When they ran the free website, of course, any money anyone wanted to spend went directly to Rowling, or perhaps Warner Brothers, which produced at least two totally execrable installments of the antiquities-laden supposedly original series.
It is, in a word, despicable. Here is a woman who, if you wish to believe her own backstory--and I'm not sure I do--was a welfare mom sitting in a cafe (Starbucks or similar, in which case what the heck on welfare was she using to pay for coffee there?) trying to pen a little story that would let her put better pablum in Junior Rowling's hungry little mug. So I guess she must have had all those classic writers committed to memory, or she'd probably have had to spend at least some of her time in a major academic library, stealing from the dead. The dead, one will note, cannot sue in a court in New York State, nor do they have the deep pockets and boundless greed of Warner Brothers to egg them on. They're dead. For a long time. But it's still their work. There was no such thing as copyright back then.
(To quote an old TV show, Car 54, Where Are You? "Oooh, oooh,oooh," what about writing a story about, for instance, Homer come back to life and pairing up with Warner Brothers to sue anyone who ever wrote any sort of story based, however loosely, on The Odyssey?)
Frankly, Ms. Rowling makes me sick. This former downtrodden welfare mom (snicker, snicker) has sold out so far that she now belongs to the "circle up those Cadillacs" crowd, using fair means and foul to prevent anyone profiting one nickel off her own ill-gotten gains. But then, honor among thieves is thin on the ground, still.
If I had ever entertained the thought of buying a Harry Potter book (and I hadn't; they are really sort of simplistic, a true dumbing-down of the material she used as reference material, although the better term might be template), I would not now. If I had entertained a thought of watching one of those "B" movies (particularly the buffoonery I admit to having watched once, directed by Chris Columbus), that is now firmly dead and buried.
I hope most writers are not cynical and rapacious; I hope, if I ever write anything with half the reach and income draw of the Potter books, that I will not begrudge someone else profiting by using my material as a base for their own, as long as they don't plagiarize.
I have been plagiarized, and it isn't fun. Maddening, really. My work for a niche publication was once lifted word for word by a national publication, and I had no recourse. But then, I also didn't have Warner Brothers to pay my bills and I hadn't based it on the classics. It was a story about bloodhounds.
But RDR and its writer did not plagiarize, at all. Even Rowling/Warner didn't try to send that balloon aloft. RDR and its writer simply researched Potter's work and wanted to issue a guidebook, if you will, to the world of Harry Potter. Such a work would be not unlike a Biblical concordance, although it pains me to put Ms. Rowling in the same sentence as the seminal religious work of the western world. I trust she will leave that work strictly alone, however; the Vatican is much more powerful than Warner Brothers and might have a go at her with Judge Patterson.
Posts
