so, the cheerleading?

[jlh]

I know, I know, spammy; I'm a little bored at the freelance job.

So my question, honestly and not wankily asked, is: Why are people so happy that JKR won the lawsuit? I wander over to FW and I see people going hurrah, and there's a few posts on my flist saying that folks are over the moon, and I'm just not sure why? I mean, fandom is the land of caring about things, so that's cool and all. But my caring was pretty limited to the actual legal test of the case.

My memory of the last time this came around was that people wanted her to win because without her there wouldn't be fandom and you know, if you feel that you have to take her side in all disputes because of that, that's fine. I personally feel that my obligation to her ended when I bought two copies of each of her books, tickets to all the movies released thus far, and three of the movies on DVD. But you know, YMMV. And that might not be why so many people are so happy about this ruling. So, enlighten me!

Thanks!

Comments

[morganmuffle]

Personally it's partly because the judgement was a sane and sensible one, partly because I like JKR and want to support her and a little bit because I dislike SVA and RDR and some of the arguments they used over the course of this whole mess.

(also I suspect a lot of it is that rather awful glee of knowing that drama is almost certainly about to happen :-S)

[folk.livejournal.com]

Envy. We eat our young.

[flourish.livejournal.com]

I have no idea. Personally I feel rather odd about the whole thing: generally speaking I'm a copyleft kind of person and don't agree with the decision. I can see the other side's argument, but I don't think it's a good one, nor is it realistic in the current world. But, I also think that it was rude and possibly unethical for Steve to attempt to publish the Lexicon against JKR's wishes - that is, I wouldn't have done it myself.

Anyway, that wasn't what you asked and I can't help with what you did ask, but.

[flourish.livejournal.com]

ETA: Reading the ruling now, I find that I'm a little more comfortable with it than I thought I was - h'm. I could go either way on it, though.

[ceilidh]

I'm happy with it because I feel he crapped on her goodwill and acted like a jerk about it. She praised and encouraged his not for profit website, and then he turned around and tried to make a buck off of it. IMO it's like someone trying to make money off fanfic, which most of us would shoot down in a heartbeat.

[locumtenens.livejournal.com]

Well, I guess I just always thought it was pretty crappy of him to take on JKR. Yes, he put a lot of effort into the site, etc., but there would be no site w/o her. And really, if JKR asks you to back off her original material b/c SHE wants to put out something similar? YOU DO IT.

[chinawolf.livejournal.com]

I am happy about it because even though I do not know SVA personally so cannot guess at his intentions, I think it was outrageous of him to take the Lexicon, which was the work of a lot of people, not just him, and tried to make money off it. It would have been different if there had been a long discussion on the site about the benefits of having it in print that had included the contributers (insofar as they were still around), if the profits had gone to charity, or whatever. As it was, in my opinion he took something that was not his in more than one way and tried to sell it. And this is what ordinary people who read the papers will remember about Potter fen. He did something to give us a bad name. Not that he is alone in doing that, but it did piss me off mightily.

See, I don't feel particularly loyal towards JKR, but she never pounced on the 'fic, and even when she could have had the NC-17 sites shut down and forced into hiding, she / her lawyers / Bloomsbury's lawyers just made them build gates. I appreciate that. So I think we should afford her some respect in return, and quite apart from the issue of SVA taking the fans' contributions, if JKR doesn't want you to publish something that does amount to pulling together info directly from the books, I think that is at least something that should be thought about carefully.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

Of whom, Steve?

[jlh.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think the ruling of law in the decision was great, but the topline "JKR wins yadda yadda" was not so much. So many people were just cheering over the headline, and I was like, but you don't know the terms or anything so I'm confused, esp as the ruling could have said something very different and still decided in favor of JKR. It was the immediate yay's that confused me.

I wouldn't have done it myself, either, but a lot of people do a lot of rude and selfish and ridiculous things and no one bats an eye. I'm beginning to see that mostly it was that people feel he was arrogant? Which makes sense but is waaaay out there beside the point.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

Although actually in the ruling the judge said that he was completely within his rights to make the encyclopedia itself; it was that he had copied too directly from particularly the schoolbooks. The implication is that if he edited the thing he could publish it. They specifically said that JKR having written the books does not actually give her an exclusive right to publish an encyclopedia based on those books, so she didn't win based on her argument that she wouldn't be able to do it herself; instead she won because it harmed the market for the books themselves. And the whole thing hinged on the paraphrase—some folks are positing that this makes fanfic even less of a grey area since almost no one quotes from the original work extensively in their fic, but rather assumes familiarity and goes on from there.

What worries me is that most of the celebrating seems to be around the top line headline rather than the further issues, and the top line headline could easily have been implying "all transformative work is bad, therefore JRK wins" and it would have surprised me that fandom was excited about that. But I should stop being surprised at how many people in fandom seem to think that we exist at the caprice of the creator.

I also hadn't realized how much bad will SVA generated just by being a jerk in other ways. The one internal-fandom argument against him that I was always down with was that he was trying to make a profit off of the efforts of a whole bunch of people; that was pretty lame. But those weren't the people suing him or who would benefit from his losing the lawsuit really.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

I agree that SVA was coasting on the work of a lot of people who may well not have done that work if it was for profit.

But I was much more concerned about the way the ruling would go, and how much impact on transformative works in general the ruling would have. You couldn't get where that lay from the headline; the judge could have ruled for JKR and said that transformative works were all problematic. In fact, the ruling was very narrow, and said that JKR doesn't have the exclusive right to make an encyclopedia at all; the reason he lost was because he didn't paraphrase enough.

So, in fact, if he'd been more careful he would have won the case, and the ethical stuff that everyone's crowing about has nothing whatsoever to do with what happened. Again, you can't get any of this from the headline "JKR wins" and I was confused that so many people in fandom would want her to win no matter what the actual decision was. However, I forget how conservative fandom really is, and how much people think that fandom exists at the caprice of the creator (when of course it doesn't). I also, having never dealt with him, didn't realize how much personal animosity SVA had garnered.

But I should have known, really; if you say you even had some sort of small problem with the books within fandom a lot of people ask for your head. Which I don't think is a good trend.

[pinkfinity.livejournal.com]

Except that when WB told me back in 2002 to re-rate *all* slash on FictionAlley including Irresistible Poison by Rhysenn, which never went beyond snogging, as R-rated, I said no. While it's theoretically possible that we were asked to do this because of her plans for Dumbledore/Grindlewald of the G - PG13 variety, it probably really isn't - they didn't even know about Dumbledore then, although she did.

Not to you in particular, but I find it so bizarre that people think that because she told Steve/RDR "no" they should have capitulated immediately - but they would've been horrified if FictionAlley had capitulated back in 2002 and didn't want the Restricted Section to cave when they got their C&D either.

I know some people think that it's unethical for me to think that you shouldn't not do something just because the original author tells you, if said author is asking for something that is not required by law - and for me to act on that premise. WB has asked HPEF and I believe has also asked Narrate not to use the word "Quidditch" in refering to the sport played at our cons - and both groups have said no, basically because the term is descriptive and has moved beyond JKR's control (among other legalese-spouting reasons).

We'd have no cons, and no fic, without her but I don't think that means she can control things when the law says they're outside her "bundle of rights".

[flourish.livejournal.com]

I mean, Steve ain't my favorite person right now either, but I guess I cared more about the ruling and the precedent it set than about Steve himself or the Lexicon, period.

Eh. Yeah. The whole think is pretty "eh," like most fandom drama, now that I know that the ruling isn't going to be a terrible test case that screws us all.

[pinkfinity.livejournal.com]

she never pounced on the 'fic, and even when she could have had the NC-17 sites shut down and forced into hiding, she / her lawyers / Bloomsbury's lawyers just made them build gates. I appreciate that.

But she did. You can still read her lawyers' letter to RestrictedSection.org here (http://www.chillingeffects.org/fanfic/notice.cgi?NoticeID=522).

The reason that RestrictedSection stayed online is because I put them in touch with Rebecca Tushnet, who specializes in fan-law, and she represented them in pushing back against WB/JKR.

If RS.org had caved at her request, and hadn't said - via their lawyer - that what they were doing was not barred by JKR's copyrights (and trademarks) I can't even imagine what HP fanfic would look like, or what she would have tried to bar next.


The date on the letter is wrong, btw. It was January of 2003.

[chinawolf.livejournal.com]

It was my understanding back then that if she had really wanted to, she could have pushed harder, and not let it rest with the C&D's, but instead forced a legal battle she would likely have won at the time. Taking into account that she would have had the money and resources to throw around and the fannish sites would not have, I always took this as a sign of JKR herself or whoever stood behind the C&D's in the first place (Bloomsbury and/or TW) being content with having NC-17 stuff padlocked, so that they would not have to answer angry letters from parents who could accuse them of not having done anything about the Potter Porn.

But maybe I misunderstood that?

[chinawolf.livejournal.com]

Heh. I share in your belief that fandom as a whole is surprisingly conservative.

I think there are two standpoints here, the legal one and what you personally feel about the case, both of which can stand individually. I laid out my personal opinion above, which was aided by the fact that I once contributed a tiny bit to the Lexicon and was pissed off that SVA seemingly - I cannot know his intentions and never thought he did it to send a big Fuck You to fandom - was going to make money of something to which a lot of people contributed.

From the legal point of view, however, this case had incredible power to screw us all, and we're unbelievably lucky that the judge made such a positive (for the fannish world at large) ruling on all the points of fair use and transformative work. I also think it is fantastic that the fine is this low, I'm sure they could have made it considerably worse.

So on the one hand, I can be happy because I think it is fair that the publication was halted - for my personal reasons - and on the other hand, I can be ecstatic that the ruling was so fanfriendly. If the publication had been halted and SVA would have had to pay millions in damages, and any such work would have been deemed copyright violations, that would have been no reason to be happy, even if I do not agree with some of the things SVA or the publisher have said in the battle. If the Lexicon has been deemed transformative enough, I would have personally thought that this was rubbish, but still have been glad for the sake of fandom at large. So in the end, the whole thing - at least from my standpoint - seems a win-win situation.

[pinkfinity.livejournal.com]

The fansites didn't need money back then - and they wouldn't now. There's a number of legal clinics in the US that would've been able to help, as the representation of RDR by the clinic at Stanford made clear. They backed down because the law wasn't on their side, and they knew it.

But if the issue is when the creator/licensees says stop, you stop then the creators and licensors are going to ask for things that they aren't legally entitled to demand under the law, just like JKR did here, and back in 2003 with RS.org

[chinawolf.livejournal.com]

Those clinics would be able to help even if the servers/defendants were not in the US?

Re the stopping issue, I have no own general opinion on that - there are too many fandoms I'd love to participate in that are hindered by the author's NO to be staunchly on the side of "respect the author", yet I can also understand it when an author does not want to see Shota of ther 8 years old characters.

But of course what the law says is the only thing that's important in the longer run, and I guess the SVA ruling is on the side of transformative works rather than the author's right to cry foul. That can only be seen as good news.

[kay-taylor.livejournal.com]

IAWTC. This was pretty much why I was pleased: IMO, SVA and RDR acted like arrogant jerks at every turn, and attempted to weasel out of much that they'd said or done in the past. Some of it was eye-rollingly stupid, and I don't LIKE eye-rollingly stupid litigants! (they're often my clients, so patience = slim!)

[kay-taylor.livejournal.com]

My caring on the legal side was minimal: I'm not a fan-lawyer, and I don't know the first thing about copyright law or how it impacts on fandom. But the twists and turns of the litigation were fascinating, and by the end I was following it just so I could see whether SVA and RDR got their come-uppance for acting like such prize wankers. I think if they'd had a different attitude re: the case, the lexicon, and life generally, I wouldn't have been secretly hoping JKR got to go at them with a pitchfork whilst wearing those LOVELY suits she has. So, coming at it from a completely different angle to you!

[locumtenens.livejournal.com]

Well, right. I agree with you. The difference here is that she wanted to put out an actual product that, had he proceeded, would have been reduced in value or confusing to readers - completely different than C&D/our fannish activities. And no, she can't automatically control things, but as a fan who gained much success off her work, I think in this case that he should have backed off out of respect.

IMO.