| WobblingMolly | 09-09-2008 01:14 PM |
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cassirin
(Post 7177305)
There were a lot of larger copyright issues at work and we'll have to see how things play out. There are already authors out there who won't let people use their work for FF... so while I understand where Rowling is coming from, I'm curious about how other authors might use this standard to limit fair use of their work. Especially in sites like SS.
| Well, the ruling was pretty simple. It came down to whether or not the Lexicon was considered fair use, or more specifically, transformative. The judge ruled it was not transformative. Why? It wasn't because he rearranged Jo's work in an A-Z order. That problem was he used direct quotations from the books for his character, spells, and creature descriptions. He stole Jo's "descriptive" and "creative language" for a huge portion of his book. The guide would also hurt the sale of Jo's companion books, because they had nearly been copied "wholesale."
So this ruling does not set any new standards for reference works and companion guides for fiction or non-fiction. As long as an author uses their own words to describe their entries, that it should be transformative.
As for the websites, the lexicon website was never mentioned in the ruling. It had no effect on the decision, so implied license was never part of the judge's decision. This is good news for fansites. However, to be honest, fansites are deriviative works, so technically we could have been shut down years ago. However, WB already went through all of that and realized it was a dangerous route to take PR wise. I think they will pick their battles. As for other authors and copyright holders, they still can shut down sites if they want to. They've always had that right. | 