"I think copyright is moral, proper. I think a creator has the right to control the disposition of his or her works - I actually believe that the financial issue is less important than the integrity of the work, the attribution, that kind of stuff. "
-Esther Dyson-
The Harry Potter copyright case attracts high level of media interest. The high-profile court case involved the author of Harry Potter, JK Rowling and the publisher of Harry Potter Lexicon (HPL), Steven Vander Ark, a 50 year old librarian. Many people might have heard of HPL as it was originated from the Harry Potter Lexicon Website that has more than 250 million hit a year as well as an encyclopedia of every spells that appear in the novel, it was an absolute Harry Potter fan guide. In 2004, JK Rowling even gave the HPL website one of her ‘fan site awards’ (Telegraph UK, 2008).
However, Ark wanted to transcript the content from the website to prints, publishes it in a form of book, and make money out of it. The transduction from Website to Prints made JK Rowling turned on one of her greatest supporter and put it on court. The lawsuit was arisen from two copyright and legal issues. Firstly, Rowling claimed that there was too many lexicons’ text taken directly from the Harry Potter novel without quotation marks.
She also states that the book was “nothing more than a rearrangement of her own material”. Second, Rowling intended to produce a Harry Potter glossary of her own for charity purposes, and the HPL book will definitely undermine that exercise (Fong & Elliot, 2008) because the ‘context of situation’ (Paltridge, 2000, p.121,122) for the two books are just too similar.
In September 2008, the high-profile Harry Potter case was put to an end when the New York Court put a ban on publishing the Harry Potter Lexicon book to protect the author’s right to defend their original work (BBC news, 2008). Steven Vander Ark was found guilty under the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act (1988). Although he tried to oppose with ‘fair-use’ principle, which will allows reproducing some of the original work and achieve one’s purposes (Stanford, 2007), but the portion of direct quote texts used in his Lexicon book were just too much.
Therefore, I think that we should always do research before we want to publish anything. Citations are only to support our ideas; we should never ‘borrow’ other authors’ original work without their permission.
References :
-Esther Dyson-
Harry Potter is a series of fictional novel. Every Potter fans know that Harry Potter survived from the attack of the most evil wizard, Voldemort. So, what happen if Harry was involved in a ‘muggle’( reality) world lawsuit? Will he survive?
The Harry Potter copyright case attracts high level of media interest. The high-profile court case involved the author of Harry Potter, JK Rowling and the publisher of Harry Potter Lexicon (HPL), Steven Vander Ark, a 50 year old librarian. Many people might have heard of HPL as it was originated from the Harry Potter Lexicon Website that has more than 250 million hit a year as well as an encyclopedia of every spells that appear in the novel, it was an absolute Harry Potter fan guide. In 2004, JK Rowling even gave the HPL website one of her ‘fan site awards’ (Telegraph UK, 2008).
However, Ark wanted to transcript the content from the website to prints, publishes it in a form of book, and make money out of it. The transduction from Website to Prints made JK Rowling turned on one of her greatest supporter and put it on court. The lawsuit was arisen from two copyright and legal issues. Firstly, Rowling claimed that there was too many lexicons’ text taken directly from the Harry Potter novel without quotation marks.
She also states that the book was “nothing more than a rearrangement of her own material”. Second, Rowling intended to produce a Harry Potter glossary of her own for charity purposes, and the HPL book will definitely undermine that exercise (Fong & Elliot, 2008) because the ‘context of situation’ (Paltridge, 2000, p.121,122) for the two books are just too similar.In September 2008, the high-profile Harry Potter case was put to an end when the New York Court put a ban on publishing the Harry Potter Lexicon book to protect the author’s right to defend their original work (BBC news, 2008). Steven Vander Ark was found guilty under the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act (1988). Although he tried to oppose with ‘fair-use’ principle, which will allows reproducing some of the original work and achieve one’s purposes (Stanford, 2007), but the portion of direct quote texts used in his Lexicon book were just too much.
Therefore, I think that we should always do research before we want to publish anything. Citations are only to support our ideas; we should never ‘borrow’ other authors’ original work without their permission.
References :
- BBC News: Rowling Wins Book Copyright Claim 2008, online, retrieved on 14th June 2009, from <¸http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7605142.stm >
- Fong,K & Elliot,J 2008, Harry Potter Copyright Case: Fair Use or Foul , online, retrieved on 14th June 2009, from < http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/law/article3834611.ece
- Paltridge,B 2000, ‘Genre Analysis’, Making Sense of Discourse Analysis, Antipodean Educational Enterprise, Gold Coast.
- Stanford: Copyright &Fair Use 2007, online , retrieved on 14th June 2009, from < http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter9/9-a.html >
- TelegraphUK : Facts about the Harry Potter Lexicon Website 2008, online, retrieved on 14th June 2009, from < http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1895676/Facts-about-the-Harry-Potter-Lexicon-website.html >
No comments:
Post a Comment