Copyright and fair use

[Admin]

Here's a fun way to understand the legal hubhub:

blog.wired.com/business/2007/05/hijacked_disney.html

On an equally serious issue, there has been a lot of talk recently about FanLib.com, a webpage that officially makes money of your fanfiction. Read more about it here:

community.livejournal.com/fandom_lawyers/34651.html

[kanshu]

community.livejournal.com/fandom_lawyers/50484.html

I think that takes the cake: A fanfic writer send out a claim of copyright infringement via LJ to a group of sporkers (people who make fun of badfic), claiming they stole from her.
The sporkers have filed a counter-claim and also one of them contacted J.K.R. Rowling's US lawers over this, because fangirl threatens to sue. Apparently, the lawyer was not pleased at all, because according to him, with filing that DMCA, the fangirl behaves as if she owns the copyrights to Harry Potter.

I just hope that this won't blow, because it could end badly for fanfiction.

[cesmith]

What an incredible mess.

Most fanfiction authors would be highly angry if their stories were sporked but it's amazing that they would take it to this extreme.

Also, I would have thought that the people would have had to have been served with the original complaint and not through a second party. I'll have to go back occasionally and see how this progresses.

You're right, though, this could make an incredible mess for fanfiction

[kanshu]

Well, according to the latest update over at deleterius.livejournal.com/ the fangirl detracted the claims against the six users, but two users have their accounts suspended since they didn't comply with the "taking down the post for two weeks" (the action is required by law, though now that she hastaken back her claims one can only hope that LJ will react and un-suspend the accounts).
The fangirl also sort-of apologized, though that apology made me want to slap her - of course, nothing is her fault and "every author would've done the same to protect their work". Uh. Yeah. Perhaps she should read Sol Stein's book, in which an author is mentioned who had to kill the first 126 pages! of his book...

But I'm afraid it's not the end of it. Since the fangirl was successful with one of her claims at an earlier time, the lawyers of JKR are now gathering material for a case. I'm not sure if they just want to scare her good or if this is actually taken to court, but if she thinks it's over just because she plays dumb teen, then I'm afraid she'll have a rather rude wakeup call.

I'm also curious about what her parents will have to say about this.

[cesmith]

Well, her parents probably didn't even know what was going on but if the lawyer contacts their minor daughter, they sure will know and then she will have some explaining to do. Unless they are total idiots like their daughter (which is possible since as humans we learn by the examples our parents set much of the time), there might be one less internet user for a while (it's also possible that her computer could be seized since it could be considered evidence of a crime). I would bet that JK Rawlings' lawyers won't do much more than a C&D order to scare the kid though.

EDIT: The website offers some interesting reading. LJ might uphold the suspension if only because the sporker users failed to obey the TOS that THEY had agreed to. I guess the right thing would have been to have taken the posts down, under protest, and then to put them back up when things had been sorted out.