Cops kill cougar on North Side

See, when I first read this, I immediately thought, "Just because a 60-year-old-woman was hitting on a 25-year-old is no reason to kill her!'

I've taken Amtrak up and down the East coast (well, between DC and NYC) at least four or five times a year for the past five years, and only once been more than half an hour late.

Wow. I'd say you've been very lucky in that case, as my trains seem to routinely run about an hour late. (Hence my preference for driving - even if I wind up stuck on the Beltway for an hour, if I'm driving I at least feel some sense of control over the situation.)

So it depends on what exactly is in the book, but it does seem like if she wins, it could dramatically change what is considered fair use.

The case is interesting to me personally because I have a friend who's just published the first of three HP trivia quiz books she's written (IIRC the second and third are coming out this summer), and if the case goes badly for the Lexicon people, she (among many many others) could be next.

Couldn't they have tranqued it? Anyway, the cougar was in Chicago, 2.4 miles from my apartment....

Or, you know, set it up on a squash court with Nutty so at least it has the fighting chance a cheetah would.

JKR first has to establish that the Lexicon is "substantially similar" to the HP books -- this may be difficult for her to do unless everything is a direct quotation from those book. Only then does the court consider whether or not the material used comes under the fair use doctrine.

Although I haven't read the briefs in the case, only the news accounts, she seems to be saying that no one can publish a derivative work without her permission -- and that's simply not true. Fair Use allows someone to create a new work based on her work, and even to quote directly from it when doing so.

The issue from JKR's personal point of view seems to be that she loves her characters very much and it hurts her feelings when other people try to write about them. Which to me doesn't sound like an airtight legal case.

(And yes, I'm sure it's more complicated than that once you get beyond the sound bites, but I really don't think she's doing herself any favors by whining to the press right now.)

this may be difficult for her to do unless everything is a direct quotation from those book.

My understanding - and it's been a little while since I was following this - is that this is substantially the case.

In fact, I bellieve that the original intent was to include a bunch of original writing that had been posted to the website, and when those writers balked at being used without permission, it got stripped down to virtually only the quoted material.

My understanding - and it's been a little while since I was following this - is that this is substantially the case.

Even so, courts have recognized substantial re-organization of material as creating a new (reference) work. Theoretically, even if every word was quoted material that still doesn't mean that it's not fair use.

WB claims that 90% of the Lexicon is quotation from Rowling's work.

It's interesting to hear y'all's perspective on it, because the segments of fandom that I'm familiar with are cheering for WB and JKR to drop an anvil on RDR's head.

It sounded from the NYT article that Rowling supported, or at least was positive about the website when it was in that form - in the same way she supports a lot of fan sites, but when they went to actively bind, publish, and sell the portion of the site as a book, that is when she grew concerned.

ION - comcast has gone full dada. they just gave me two automated options - both identical. Can one really call them options at that point?

the segments of fandom that I'm familiar with are cheering for WB and JKR to drop an anvil on RDR's head.

It's true, but I also wonder to what extent people are responding to the incredibly bad fan-etiquette. I mean, there are certainly people on either side of the question whose legal analysis I trust way more than mine, but a lot of the reaction I've seen seems to be to the incredible assiness (in a certain culture, that is) of "I'm going to take my fan website and publish it".