On Sep 20, 2008, at 3:07 PM, Gwern Branwen wrote:
On 2008.09.20 14:27:29 -0400, WJhonson(a)aol.com
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Phil (and others). Wasn't there a case
recently where a guy made an
"Encyclopedia" of the Harry Potter universe ?
And then Rowling sued him? Or something like that. I vaguely
remember it.
Will
Yes, the case recently ended. I read the judge's decision. It was
interesting, but more or less irrelevant to Wikipedia: Vanderark was
fined the statutory minimum, and he only got that much because he
quoted quite a bit from Rowling, and didn't even quote a lot of his
quoting. Further, the judge was less than impressed by how much
context and analysis he did. Further aggravating factors were the
commercial nature of the encyclopedia, missteps in promotion of it,
and less than good-est faith on their part.
So if anyone is seriously worried that we, or the Harry Potter
Wikia, might be next - that's just copyright paranoia. Neither meet
the judge's points in multiple ways.
Though this is one of the major reasons we need to deal with fictional
works primarily from an out-of-universe perspective, yes, this just
about sums it up.
Honestly, the main reason a lot of our plot summaries need trimming is
that they're too detailed to follow easily, not that they're copyright
problems.
-Phil