News: Internet and Copyright Law

I’m very inter­ested in the res­o­lu­tion of the JK Rowl­ing case as it does spot­light one the com­plex issues of “fair use” and copy­right law. It is inter­est­ing to note that JK Rowl­ing her­self admit­ted to using the Harry Pot­ter Lex­i­con and endorsed it on the ‘net but when the cre­ator of this web­site decided to pub­lish an ency­clo­pe­dia of her work — “he became a com­peti­tor” since Rowl­ing her­self has plans to release a ency­clo­pe­dia for her fans, too. Fair enough and I can under­stand her want­ing the fan based ency­clo­pe­dia banned from being pub­lished. It’s her char­ac­ters, it’s her hard work that’s at stake here. But if you visit the lex­i­con, it is very well main­tained web­site and obvi­ously this guy put in a lot of hard work in main­tain­ing the site and mak­ing it a use­ful resource that even the author admit­ted to using. This is not an easy case to decide and hope that both par­ties do agree to a settlement.

For Fur­ther Reading

• JK Rowl­ing Goes to Court over Harry Potter
• Amazon’s Big Brother Response Leads To PR Night­mare for Kin­dle Device
• Judge Puts Stop to the Pub­li­ca­tion of The Harry Pot­ter Lexicon
• The Tales of the Bee­tle Bard by JK Rowl­ing On Sale Dec 4^th
• Author News: JK Rowl­ing Had Suf­fered From Depression
• JK Rowl­ing Drops Hints of Pos­si­ble Sequel for Pot­ter Fans

Tagged as: Copyright law, Harry Potter Lexicon, JK Rowling