Total Intellectual Property Insanity (2 for 1 deal!)

You can all guess what side I come down on on the whole JK Rowling vs. Steven Van Der Ark controversy, right?

In case you don't know what I'm talking about, a guy named Steven VanDer Ark is a big Harry Potter fan, so big that he created a comprehensive lexicon of the Harry Potterverse so detailed and well-organized that Rowling herself has consulted it in order to make sure she had the continuity of her world straight while writing the later novels in the series.  Well,  now the lexicon is set to be published and Rowling and Warner Brothers are suing.

Her claims on this one are nuts.  She claims that the lexicon lifts sections of the Harry Potter books without adding original thought or interpretation, but she herself has consulted it for her own purposes. This is becasue its added value is not in new information but rather in organization of the information. That's because it's a lexicon. He didn't claim her words or ideas were his own, he's written a tool to help others access the world she has created, one she herself finds useful but doesn't want distributed.

Far smarter for Rowling and Warner Brothers would've been to buy the rights for the Lexicon and distribute it themselves (with, if she wants, possible additions or reworking from Rowling).  They have the money to do so, rather than sue an independant press over this.. But because we have this nut-ball emphaiss on creative content as physical proprety, that kind of flexibility is unthinkable.  What matters to them is property rights, and the assertion of territory and power, rather than what might be best of the series, or readers, or even Rowling's legacy.

Commenting on all of this, song-writer Helienne Lindvall writes:

Yes, I agree that both the Stones and JK Rowling are being pretty heavy handed, but the right to protect your work and have a say in what happens to it is an issue that the advent of the internet has made more important than ever.

Much has been written about how illegal downloading affects the film and music industry, as people steal and even make money - sites like Pirate Bay are not charities where people work for free, believe me - off the stolen work.

But the effects of many internet users' disrespect of copyright can be felt much further than that and they affect the livelihood of millions of people. Written work is plagiarised, photographers' pictures are used without permission and teachers second-guess any paper that gets handed in.

But this line of thought makes the mistake of conflating all of the various issues invovled in Copyright into one issue (i should say that the way IP law works does the same thing). Being financially compensated for use of your work, being recognized when its used and having control over how it is used are three separate issues that in an ideal world would be treated separately.  Illegally downloading The Smiths' Louder Than Bombs is stealing. Writing a Lexicon to the world of Harry Potter (or making The Grey Album) is making something new that is related to something you didn't create. Using unattributed found text in a play is something else entirely.  A legal system that treats all three as thievery is a deeply broken system that is simultaneously misguided about how art is made and how influence works.   

Comments

[Laura]

You're right, it would've been far smarter for her to work with the guy on the book.

I haven't seen the work in question but it sounds like it's a derivative product. Without Harry Potter, the series, there's no lexicon. Basically, he's making money off of her work.

But again, if she was worried about quality etc. she should've co-authored it with him. It would've been a win/win for both.

[Rosie Powell]

If Steven Van Der Ark wanted to publish and profit from the Lexicon site, he should have asked Rowling for her permission. Rowling's novels are the reasons why Van Der Ark was able to create the Lexicon website in the first place. It's one thing to create the encyclopedia on the Internet, as long as he doesn't make a profit from it. But he tried to make a profit from Rowling's novels by publicizing the Lexicon website . . . without her permission. I really cannot see how anyone would be sympathetic towards him.

[Kim]

I'm sympathetic to Van Der Ark. He's not making money that would otherwise have gone into Rowling's pocket and if the Lexicon is popular it will only help her sales. There's no exploitation here that I can see.

[Noah]

I haven't been following the case that closely, mostly because it depresses me and has caused a schism in the HP fan community, which I generally like a lot. But didn't this really only become an issue when Van Der Ark wanted to PUBLISH the lexicon? When it was just an Internet fancy it was fine with Rowling and all involved. Only when he allied himself with a corporate entity, a publisher, did the corporate entities allied with Rowling feel the need to shut it down. I'm sympathetic with both parties, but Van Der Ark seems to be stepping very close to a line a lot of fans cross "because I have devoted so much time and energy to this hobby, it OWES me something."

The real issue is, if Rowling and co didn't fight this, would the slope get slippery. Could I publish my own book with her characters and claim she had abandoned her copyright? I know that was a big concern with Star Trek fansites a while ago. Paramount seems to have found balance, it even allows people to make those "new voyages" episodes with new actors playing Kirk and Spock, just so long as the creators don't profit. But I don't think this is just corporate paranoia.