Linkage mostly for my own benefit...

[briarwood]

I don't have a lot of time for fandom_wank - fandom's schoolyard bully - but it's been a useful source for the Harry Potter Lexicon legal fight over the past few months.

Leaky Cauldron has a detailed summary of day one in court here.

And from there I found jkrtrialblog. I doubt that anyone, anywhere will provide an impartial account of events (short of the actual court records, obviously, but they're not online!), but these seem reasonably factual, unlike most of the professional press articles on the subject, most of which seem to focus on JKR's celebrity instead of the facts of the lawsuit.

Mostly, I stay the hell out of HP fandom because I'm a fan of the books. The insanity of that particular fandom is nothing I want in on. So I've never read the Lexicon and I have no clue how much of it is directly plagiarised from JKR's books. But the one thing all sides in this case agree on is that it has major implications for fandom as a whole. I'm following with interest.

ETA: http://www.kitwhitfield.com/2008/03/macho-sue.html
Nothing to do with HP, but I totally need to bookmark this.

Comments

[decor-noctis.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link! I've been wondering where I could keep an eye on this.

I don't think the issue is so much plagiarism, as in direct lifting of her material, as him trying to make a profit from publishing an encyclopedia of her work.

(Oh, no, wait, it's both! There's a pie chart (http://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/new-york/nysdce/1:2007cv09667/315790/83/) here, showing the percentage that's JKR's material.)

[morgan32.livejournal.com]

I don't think the issue is so much plagiarism, as in direct lifting of her material, as him trying to make a profit from publishing an encyclopedia of her work.

Not if you read the reports of JKR's testimony.

If the issue were publishing an encyclopedia for profit I don't think the balance of fandom opinion would be on JKR's side. Nor would the lawsuit have got this far: a true encylcopedia would selectively quote from her works and would be fair use. (Which, yes, is the defence they're using.)

But the evidence so far presented suggests that he's plagiarised much, much more than would be acceptable under fair use provisions, and added very little of the original content needed to make the lexicon legally an original work. Perhaps the evidence is wrong; I don't know. The lawsuit was prompted by the profit issue: she tolerated his infringement as long as it was confined to the web. But it's not the central issue of the case...if I understand it correctly.

And that pie chart is wonderful, ain't it? (Even more so if it's accurate.)