Today is a momentous day in my life as a blogger. I have a fangirl. Yes, yes. zibbycomix is my fangirl and she is a great fangirl to have. : )
In other news...I know this is only my second day, but already I'm inspired to write about Harry Potter. OK, this isn't exactly about Harry Potter. As you might be able to guess from the subject line, it's about J.K. Rowling's lawsuit, currently in between the closing arguments and the decision. I thought I'd just mention this today for two reasons, one, everybody else is blogging about it and if everyone else jumped off a bridge I would sure as heck join them because I don't know how to grow wheat or mill flour and I wouldn't survive very long without bread...or cake...or brioche even. Two, both MuggleCast and PotterCast discussed the trial in their podcasts this week. I would urge anyone who doesn't know what's going on to go over to The Leaky Cauldron and read their excellent and very professional and responsible coverage of the whole case and listen to their commentary on it this week. I found it both informative and edifying.
Now, I am not a lawyer, and like Shakespeare, whose birthday is coming up on Wednesday (which I know because it's the same day as the birth of my littlest nepot), I never much cared for the profession. However, I have two (Wow! Count 'em! Two!) personal connections to the issue which I think might be of interest to readers. The first, of course, is that I am an artist, and a starving one at that, and copyright/fair use, etc. are important issues to me. I think it's pretty obvious that, in general, I side with original authors. Now, as I said, I have not been trained in the law and have not seen all the evidence in this case, but it seems pretty clear to me that Jo and Warner Bros. should win here, even though the fair use law is disturbingly vague.
Why is it disturbingly vague? Well, this relates to another of my favorite subjects and one I think about especially on my birthday, and that is America. For those of you who don't know, April 19 is Patriots' Day, because on that day in 1775 the battles of Lexington and Concord were fought. To quote Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Concord Hymn", "By the rude bridge that arched the flood,/their flag to April's breeze unfurled;/here once the embattled farmers stood;/and fired the shot heard round the world." This date has been celebrated in many forms here in America (see Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "Paul Revere's Ride," which is my birthday poem, and which I have read (and lately recited) on my birthday for about sixteen years), along with December 16, 1773 (National Checking Account Marketing Day, but that's for another post). Some of you may have already noticed that the Battles of Lexington and Concord took place more than a year before the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. But no one ever mentions that in school (at least I never heard it there). Is this a classic case of the victor rewriting history? Perhaps, by my point (I usually do have one...) is that The Law has always been a sticky subject for Americans.
The reason for this, I think, is that America's ideology owes a huge amount to John Locke who wrote that human beings have the natural right to live in a free society and that if they find themselves burdened by unjust laws they have not only the right, but the duty to overturn said laws and (as the American experiment proved) even to depose their king (but perhaps not dispose of their king a la les francais). (See New Hampshire's motto: "Live Free or Die.") The idea of self-reliance and self-governence has therefore always been a strongly held tenet of the American people. The classic American heroes (think cowboys and even outlaws in the Old West...or currently, here in Wyoming...) are those men and women who did what they felt was right, or even did whatever they pleased, with conviction. As Mark Twain said, "America has no native criminal class...except congress." In other words, in America, unlike in most countries worldwide, any idiot can be a criminal. This is what makes America great. Really.
We also love the idea of the underdog, having convinced ourselves that we were once underdogs too. But the underdog is not just the weaker of two parties. The true underdog is the person who stands on his own against injustice, who fights on principle alone. And that's the crux of my argument. The person who seems to be standing on principle alone in this case is J.K. Rowling. She is protecting her intellectual property in the name of all current and future authors and all of the diverse and wonderful people who make up this thing called fandom. Now, I'm not saying an encyclopedia of an existing work of literature is a bad idea, but this particular one, as it quotes numerous passages of the original work without citations or scholarly merit must be stopped for the benefit of future works by other authors, but more on that in a second.
First, I want to go to my anecdote. I am sorry this case went to court and that a lawsuit occurred at all. This is a very sad situation for reasons I'll list at the end. My father invented something called "Totally Free Checking." You've probably seen banks across the country advertizing "totally free checking." Most of those are not "in" with my father's program (wherein the checking is actually, you know, totally free, unlike in most banks which say they have "free checking" but really don't). Why is this? My father copyrighted the phrase and the concept. It is his intellectual property. The reason is, when the first infringement occurred, he had to make a decision: "Do I keep on selling my product as best I can and help my clients, or do I spend the rest of my life in a series of lawsuits fighting every single instance of infringement?" Now, before you cry "exaggeration," know that many people have done exactly that. My father chose the former with the consequence that he didn't throw away all our money on lawyers' fees and bank customers have to hear a lot of false advertizing when looking for a friendly neighborhood bank within five miles of their home or business. ; )
So, my point is that the fair use law is vague, therefore precedence becomes immensely important as precedence is a legally binding factor in the courts of America. So, although Jo would not lose any money over "The Harry Potter Lexicon," other authors could lose everything over similar products (related to their work) in the future. Personally, I have never bought any "guide" books to Harry Potter and have no intention of doing so for two reasons: one, I can think for myself, thank you, and two, I doubt they'd say anything meaningful I didn't already know or learned for free elsewhere. But, I am concerned that well-meaning but ignorant relatives buy anything with a particular brand name on it for kids they know without thinking about the money trails or who might be getting hurt. Not that there's anything wrong with that, well-meaning relatives! But, it's something that I think about and therefore matters enormously to me.
Unfortunately, I think that no matter who wins this case, the consequences for my favorite fandom will be profound. If Jo delays her own companion book to the series because of this, or worse, abandons the project entirely, in the words of The Princess Bride, "I shall be very put out." Either way, I think we can say goodbye to Jo's fansite awards, and say hello to a less open and more bitter and disillusioned fan base. Over all it's just a sad business that probably could have been resolved in another way. On a final note: just remember that before the Fall of Rome, philosophers were complaining about frivilous lawsuits and a surfeit of lawyers.
-Susie
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