J K Rowling – greedy idiot
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/15/nyregi…
It was her first time testifying in a courtroom, J. K. Rowling said on Monday, and she was a bit nervous.
But she had flown to New York from her Edinburgh home for the occasion, she testified, because she felt so strongly about someone else turning 17 years of her labor on the Harry Potter series into an encyclopedia.
It has been so difficult, she said, that her normal writing life has been all but paralyzed by “stress and heartache.”
You know what I really hate? When dozens or hundreds of people work hard to build a town, and then some – sniff! – mere cartographer – comes along and turns their work into a dot on a map.
What gives a cartographer the right to put a dot and a word on a page?
If he wants to acknowledge the existence of a bustling town, then clearly he should pay royalties to the townspeople.
“It has really decimated the demands of my creative work for the last month,” she testified, at least once stoically holding back tears as she talked about the Potter books as if they were her children.
Yes, I’m sure that an encyclopedia of the world of Harry Potter is a substitute good for the Harry Potter books, in the same way that a how-to video on proper bandsaw use is a substitute for buying a bandsaw, and in the same way that a concordance is a substitute for a bible.
“You lose the threads, you worry if you’ll ever be able to pick them up again,” she said.
(a) The Harry Potter series is done – what threads is she worried about losing?
(b) If she wants to get refreshed on the Harry Potter universe, she should consult the encyclopedia (< cymbal crash >!)
Ms. Rowling argued on Monday in Federal District Court in Manhattan that the proposed encyclopedia – she has read the manuscript – is a copyright infringement and is little more than an alphabetical form of plagiarism.
Just like the phonebook!
What she denounced as plagiarism and a waste of money, the publisher defended as literary scholarship and an invaluable tool for Harry Potter readers, similar to a Shakespeare concordance, the Encyclopedia Britannica, the dictionary and other reference books. Ms. Rowling said the manuscript was “sloppy, lazy,” riddled with errors and motivated by the publisher’s and author’s realization that it could bring “a fast buck.”
Which is entirely distinct from her motivations in bringing the lawsuit, licensing Harry Potter to be a movie, a t-shirt, a hat, several games, several toys, several lego sets, a wand, a brooch, a pin, a soundtrack, a pillow, a chess set, and a doll.
The lead defense lawyer, David Hammer, was not impressed with her literary critique of the work.
“Have you ever read a dictionary, Miss Rowling?” Mr. Hammer demanded. Alphabetical order, he continued, “is what the Encyclopedia Britannica uses, isn’t that true?”
To which Ms. Rowling retorted: “What are you accessing in these A-to-Z’s? Aren’t you being suckered out of your hard-earned cash?”
“You feel it’s your responsibility to prevent people from paying their hard-earned cash for things you don’t like?” Mr. Hammer asked.
“Absolutely not,” Ms. Rowling replied. “This is theft. This is wholesale theft.”
Wow.
You read through this article, and you realize that J K Rowling is fairly incoherent, and can’t keep a single thread straight.
No wonder the books suck so badly.
It was the ultimate irony, Mr. Rapoport’s lawyer said, that the same Web site that Ms. Rowling was now denigrating was one that she had admitted using herself a time or two to check facts.
See above my “cymbal crash” reference…
Ms. Rowling conceded that she had given a “fan-site award” to Mr. Vander Ark’s Web site in 2004,
Have you ever been in a fight where you look around for the other guy, and you can’t see him, and you realize that that’s because you’re lying face-down in the dirt?
Rowling now knows that feeling.
…or, at least, she should, if she’s paying attention.
When she gave the award, she wrote on her own Web site: “I have been known to sneak into an Internet cafe while out writing and check a fact rather than go into a bookshop and buy a copy of Harry Potter…”
…and then, you realize, that you’re not actually face down in the dirt, but you’re in the hospital, on life support, dreaming that you’re in the dirt ?
Now, here’s something fun: the article was written by “Jennifer 8. Lee”.
Yes “8″.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_8….
Jennifer 8. Lee
Jennifer 8. Lee … is a New York Times reporter for the Metro section. She writes her middle name as “8.” (with both the digit and the punctuation) on paper, but on her New York driver’s license, it is spelled out as “Eight”…
Many Chinese and Japanese names contain numbers written in characters.
Wow. Cool.
… Citing the buzzed-about article in which she coined the term ‘man-dates’, NPR referred to her as a “conceptual scoop artist”[1].
Ohhh.
That idiot.
In response, she explained that “it literally is, kind of, stories that people talk about, [as in,] ‘Hey, did you hear that story about cell phones and flirting? That was really awesome.’”
Uhhh….
“Totally” ?
April 15th, 2008 at 10:45 am
You read through this article, and you realize that J K Rowling is fairly incoherent, and can’t keep a single thread straight.
I wonder if it’s that, or the way the article is written. A skilled reporter could make William F. Buckley look like a drooling moron with selective or out of sequence quoting.
April 15th, 2008 at 11:28 am
I wonder if Lee is also behind the present surge of “bro-mance” articles?
April 15th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
“It literally is, kind of”?
April 15th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
Many Chinese and Japanese names contain numbers written in characters.
True, but her Chinese name as written in the Wikipedia article does not.
April 15th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
I don’t like the phone book or cartography analogy. Those would hold far better if it was a literature encyclopedia or even a magical encyclopedia for which the Harry Potter realm would be a nearly insignficant entry when compared to the whole. (What is one name to a phone book? What is one town to a world map?)
A closer analogy would be for making a map of the town or a phone book for the residents of my house. Even then, I think Rowling has a decent leg to stand on as in this case a substantial portion (most?) of the value of the encyclopedia is derived from her copyrighted creation.
I view it as akin to me selling T-shirts with Mickey Mouse on them or an encyclopedia of Disney characters. If I did either without the approval of Disney, I would expect to be sued and would expect to lose.
In other words – if it were the Harry Potter entry in Encyclopedia Britannica, your analogy would be right and Rowling would be silly. But it’s the “Harry Potter Lexicon” and I think she’s not only in the right, but obligated if she wishes to maintain her copyright.
On the website vs the encyclopedia, there’s a world of difference once something becomes a commercial product versus a fan-site.
On the other note – the reporting is indeed pretty attrocious and not at all focused on what I believe to be the actual case.
April 15th, 2008 at 8:18 pm
[quote comment="136565"]I think Rowling has a decent leg to stand on as in this case a substantial portion (most?) of the value of the encyclopedia is derived from her copyrighted creation.[/quote]
The US Copyright law cares only tangentially about where the “value” in a work comes from. It cares mostly about the percentage of new material.
E.g.:
http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ14.html#derivative/
To be copyrightable, a derivative work must be different enough from the original to be regarded as a “new work†or must contain a substantial amount of new material.
[quote comment="136565"]
I view it as akin to me selling T-shirts with Mickey Mouse on them or an encyclopedia of Disney characters. If I did either without the approval of Disney, I would expect to be sued and would expect to lose.
[/quote]
A t-shirt where 100% of the IP comes from someone else? Sure, Disney wins.
A timeline of Mickey Mouse appearances, organized by by date, artist, etc.?
[quote]
In other words – if it were the Harry Potter entry in Encyclopedia Britannica, your analogy would be right and Rowling would be silly. But it’s the “Harry Potter Lexicon” and I think she’s not only in the right, but obligated if she wishes to maintain her copyright.
[/quote]
On this point alone, Rowling is already screwed, because she has not only condoned, but has praised the website that the book is a new version of.
[quote]
On the website vs the encyclopedia, there’s a world of difference once something becomes a commercial product versus a fan-site.
[/quote]
“There’s a world of difference” is a common misapprehension about the US copyright law.
April 15th, 2008 at 9:36 pm
yah…wow!!!! doesn’t the woman have enough money already? i mean, great books, i love her for that, but now this is just too much! i expected more out of her, but seeing her at a level this low changes my whole image of her! love harry not rowling.
April 16th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
The only US case I’m familiar with about this issue is Castle Rock Entertainment, Inc. v. Carol Publishing Group, Inc. (a group wanted to publish a “Seinfeld Aptitude Test” that was eventually ruled outside of fair use). There are quite a few differences between that and this; not the least of which is that many of Rowling’s creatures (trolls, house gnomes, etc.) come from traditional fairy tales.
April 16th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
Ah, found another case that I should have remembered: The Wind Done Gone (comparison between Seinfeld and The Wind Done Gone at http://www.ivanhoffman.com/seinfeld.html ). The encyclopedia is being represented by Stanford University, which may not bode well for them. On the other hand, if they are able to cast the complaint as nothing more than Rowling trying to control discussion about Harry Potter ( http://www.slate.com/id/2181776/pagenum/all/ ), then they may be successful.
March 22nd, 2009 at 5:00 pm
This is just a matter of money. Rowling has no right to prevent other people to write about Harry Potter. She should seek psychiatric help about this obsession of her.
To start with, SHE (Rowling), should have been sued by Anthony Horowitz (british author) in the first place, as his book “Groosham Grange” (published several years before Harry Potter) is where she got her basic ideas for Harry Potter (a boy who has magic powers but doesn’t know until one day a wizard’s school contacts his family the day of his aniversary, etc.)
Rowling is quite a different person from what I thought she was when I started reading her books. The more I hear about her, the less I like her.