HP Fandom is wanking for a change

[teyla]

So, you all probably know HP Lexicon. Looks like the owner/maintainer/whatever, one Steve Vander Ark, has gotten it into his head that he wants to release the site as an encyclopedia in book form. Naturally, JKR doesn't like the idea, and there's lots of bitching and snarking and issuing lawsuits (for a much longer and more detailed explanation, click here to get to praetorianguard's journal.).

This book in question would:
- not be given away for free, meaning it would cost money and bring the publisher profit.
- not contain any new content; it's only a rearrangement of content copyrighted to JKR and whoever she sold the rights to.

All this I found via this f_w entry.

So, my question: why the hell is this even being discussed? I mean, I'd always figured there was a reason we put disclaimers in the headers of our fic. Only borrowing the characters, making no profit, please don't sue. And there's even additional content in a fanfic story. Hell, some HP fanfiction has almost nothing to do with the original anymore. Still, nobody would go and try and publish their fanfic commercially, would they? So why is HP fandom wailing and calling JKR an evil bitch for her not wanting some stranger to make profit from publishing a book filled with ideas she came up with?

Fandom. Sometimes it really puzzles me.

Comments

[chaoskir.livejournal.com]

*smile*
Well I´m agree with your sentence: "Fandom. Sometimes it really puzzles me".
Every time if it puzzles me I do always think: "Humans are weird." You know that, do you? *lol* I guess I said it before (*cough* ähm more than once? *lol*)
Oh and in the last years I understand that you can´t do change anything but your own thoughts and your own behaviour. I guess you can´t change the HP fandom. I know you don´t want that, right? Well maybe that would be a lot of work *grin*. Sometimes serenity would be helpful.
And I try to live in a kind of serenity (it´s from The Serenity-Prayer):
I wished I would have the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Well, *lol* I guess the wisdom to know the difference I´ll do missing untill I´ll be death. You know, I´m an owner of only one own and one borrowed brain cell. ;-))
I´ve tried to reassured myself with the first part. *lol* I mean to accept the no-change-things and the I-can-change-things. Well I have to live with the consequences of my "I-can-change-things-behaviour." Arrgghh, for example it made me to and House-X-files-SG-1-SG-A-Addict. And I do love those consequences.

[teyla]

Lol, yeah, not trying to change the HP fandom. Trying that would be like trying to stand in the way of - oh, I don't know. The Enterprise D at warp 11? Something like that. Lol.

It's just so puzzling. I mean, HP writers do put disclaimers on their fic, too, don't they? How hard is the mental leap from that to understanding that what Steve Vander Ark is doing is completely against copyright law? *shakes head*

[aryshtin.livejournal.com]

O_o That's indeed baffling.

Do they know that there already IS a published HP Lexicon? here (http://www.amazon.de/Das-rund-Harry-Potter-Lexikon/dp/3896022806/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2/302-2215795-0323238?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194101854&sr=8-2) Just sayin'. ;-)

Those people need to get themselves a hobby.

[teyla]

Hee, yeah, there are several HP encyclopedias out there, and JKR has announced that she'll be writing one, too. So, really, there's not even any need for a HP encyclopedia in book form. Which only underlines - for me, anyway - that SVA is probably doing this mainly for profit.

Those people need to get themselves a hobby.
But they already have one! Wanking all over the HP comms! Lol ;).

[neery.livejournal.com]

Haha, a topic we disagree on! I am shocked. SHOCKED, I tell you.

Now, I don't want people to publish their fanfics for money, but that's because this is fandom, our community based on gifts and friendship and love, and bringing money in here would ruin it.

But out in the real world? Hell yeah, I want people to be able to profit from publishing books that are based on / inspired by / revolve around ideas that other people came up with, and it's pissing me off that copyright is moving into a direction where many of the best forms of that will soon be impossible.

Take Disney as an example: Land Before our Time, The Little Mermaid, Cinderella, Bambi, The Jungle Book... none of those ideas where created by them, an they got really fucking rich off making movies from other people's writing. And yet, they're my beloved childhood movies, and I'm really damn glad copyright wasn't bullshitty enough back then to prevent those movies from being made.

I want people to be able to make their living writing parodies and encyclopedias and academic essays and, yes, films and spin-off stories off other people's ideas, and I want people to realize that that would harm no one at all. Seriously, do you think there's a single fan out there who loves HP enough that they'd buy a fan-written encyclopedia for it who won't also buy JKR's encyclopedia, which promises to be full of extra little fun facts (like, say, Dumbledore: gay <3)?

Yeah, artists should be paid for their ideas - by people buying their books / music / whatever. But beyond that, I think it should be possible for people to take their ideas and spin off of them, and then, yes, get paid for the results. That's how culture used to work - no one objected to the ten millionth retelling of King Arthur or Snow White or whatever Roman story it was Shakespeare got Romeo and Juliet from. Hell, JKR didn't exactly invent centaurs and goblins and dragons, either.

How often have we talked about how much we'd love to make a living writing fanfiction? Well, some people do. FUCKING GOOD FOR THEM, I say.

[teyla]

Yeah, I get what you mean. I agree with you that people should be able to publish and make money off their fanfiction. As long as it's good enough, lol ;).

I'm certainly not the Last Samurai of Copyright Law. Am totally not, lol, I think copyright law is the most ridiculous thing ever, especially the way it's being handled at the moment.

My problem with what SVA is doing is this: he doesn't add any content at all, and he is doing this even though JKR announced a while back that she was going to publish an encyclopedia. It's just not buddies, you know? Fandom and creators should work together, not against each other. Maybe JKR and the HP Lexicon could have launched some sort of joint venture or something. Or maybe I'm being horribly naive. It's just that when I heard about this, I was like, oh, look at that, SVA heard about the encyclopedia, figured, why not publish my website and make lotsa money without doing any more work than I'm doing already, and went ahead with his idea without considering that this would put a rift between fandom and creator - another one, I might say. It just doesn't sit with me.

About the other thing - yes, I think fanfiction writers should be able to publish their stuff, even without the creator's approval, as long as it's not simply a rearrangement of the ideas the creator came up with. At least as long as the creator's original work is still being appreciated by a broad fannish community.

There's this copyright law for music, I don't know if it applies to literature as well: as soon as it's over 70 years old, it's public property. Anyone can do whatever they want with it. I like that law. Unfortunately, it's often rendered ineffective by shit like inherited copyright and what not. As so often, a good idea is being ruined by idiotic shitheads who want to live off the work their daddy or mommy accomplished. This is annoying, but there's nothing really to be done about that, as there is nothing to be done about the idiocy of most copyright laws in general.