Comments on: JK Rowling Copyright Case: Why Writers Need to Pay Attention http://www.mlvwrites.com/2008/04/jk-rowling-copyright-case-writers-pay-attention.html Monica Valentinelli Tue, 07 Oct 2008 07:56:33 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 By: Ken Marable http://www.mlvwrites.com/2008/04/jk-rowling-copyright-case-writers-pay-attention.html#comment-379 Ken Marable Wed, 16 Apr 2008 14:04:36 +0000 http://www.mlvwrites.com/2008/04/jk-rowling-copyright-case-writers-pay-attention.html#comment-379 In all fairness I haven't been following the case closely and might just be victim of the media's story, but the impression I got was that it's a case of "Love the website, but suing about the book" which might explain why she let it go for so long. So, hopefully however it is settled, it will be a decision about the book and not the website. In my own opinion, I think clamping down on fan sites would only hurt authors in the long run. But clamping down on other companies publishing those fan sites as books, I'm honestly on the fence on. I can see some cases falling into infringement (i.e. publishing fan fiction) and others being fair use scholarly works. So the difficulty is deciding where to draw that line and it would be nice if this case decides that in a sensible manner, but I guess we'll see. In all fairness I haven’t been following the case closely and might just be victim of the media’s story, but the impression I got was that it’s a case of “Love the website, but suing about the book” which might explain why she let it go for so long.

So, hopefully however it is settled, it will be a decision about the book and not the website. In my own opinion, I think clamping down on fan sites would only hurt authors in the long run. But clamping down on other companies publishing those fan sites as books, I’m honestly on the fence on. I can see some cases falling into infringement (i.e. publishing fan fiction) and others being fair use scholarly works. So the difficulty is deciding where to draw that line and it would be nice if this case decides that in a sensible manner, but I guess we’ll see.

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