Writing

A New York court has found in favour of Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, in her attempt to have an unofficial Potter encyclopaedia banned from publication. While I initially had concerns over this case - as it seems to give full control of (print) discussion and commentary about fictional books to the author/publisher - there seem to be details which indicate that this particular encyclopaedia lifted liberally from Rowling, Indeed, in his decision the judge explicitly points out that he does not want to stifle 3rd party reference works:

Making his ruling, Judge Patterson said reference materials could help readers, but Mr Vander Ark had gone too far in this case. He said: "While the Lexicon, in its current state, is not a fair use of the Harry Potter works, reference works that share the Lexicon's purpose of aiding readers of literature generally should be encouraged rather than stifled." He said he had made his decision because: "Lexicon appropriates too much of Rowling's creative work for its purposes as a reference guide".

I was concerned about this case for an important reason - I am myself the writer of another fairly high profile '3rd party reference book': The Guide to Dan Brown's The Solomon Key. So I guess my reaction is...*phew*!

The NY Times has an interesting opinion piece on whether copyright should exist into perpetuity. Currently, any written material prior to around 1922 (depending on which region you live in) is now in the public domain, and many publishers (including PoD publishers) have latched on to these works as a means of profit (with no author to pay a royalty to) - see my article "Publishing in the Public Domain". Some good points in the NYT article, well worth a read.