AFSCME 3357-HOF'S BLOG

Will Rowling's Suit Womp the Wikis?

Harry Potter author, J.K. Rowling, has sued the publisher of The Harry Potter Lexicon, a 400 page reference book written by Steve Vanderark. Vanderark is the force behind the website www.hp-lexicon.org, upon which the litigated book is based. Rowling has stated that the Hp-lexicon infringes upon the territory that she intends to cover in a Harry Potter encyclopedia that she intends to write in the future.

I can understand Ms. Rowling's position, and if you look at the lexicon site, you can tell that this advertising-enhanced site gets substantially all of its content from Ms. Rowling's works. The problem is that much of the same content is available in the standard (nonprofit, noncommercial) Wikipedia encyclopedia. In fact, Wikipedia hosts a special Harry Potter Portal that serves as a gateway to all the Wikipedia potter-related content. Can the New York court reviewing the Rowling case craft a ruling that allows Ms. Rowling to benefit from her work without threatening wikipedia, which is an education resource of unparallelled value? Should the court focus on content or on comercial marketing? The fact of the matter is that on the web, there are many levels of comerciality. Youtube went a long time without posting advertising on its site, and before it generated substantial advertising revenue, it was snapped up by Google for billions of dollars. Today, youtube probably hosts more songs than were ever available on Napster, and many of the moste dedicated youtubers have never bought a CD in their lives. A comprehensive wiki can reduce the value for an author's encyclopedic works even if it is noncommercial. There are several specialized wikis devoted to Potteralia, including the The Harry Potter Wiki at wikia.com. I have no idea how commercial these wikis really are, but they can be pretty comprehensive.

Issues of fair use and derivative works go far beyond encyclopedias and compendiums to all kinds of derivative works. For example, the Potter cult is likely larger than even that of Star Trek or Star Wars. Potter fan fiction fills hundreds of thousands of web pages. Potter-inspired "Wizard Rock" has a home on youtube.com, with over 2,350 separate videos posted under that term. Perhaps the biggest rising star in the potter universe is a young man named Neil Cicierga. Neil is the creator of Potter Puppet Pals, or PPP among afficianados. Potter Puppet Pals is a series of short videos mostly hosted on youtube.com. An episode of Potter Puppet Pals called The Mysterious Ticking Noise won a Youtube Comedy Award, and it has been viewed over 40 million times. Most cable tv shows would kill for 40 million viewers. Each viewer is subjected to an advertisement in the right pane that ads som cha-ching to the Google cash mashine. I'm embedding a link to another Potter Puppet Pal video, called Wizard Swears because I think it's funnier than The Mysterious Ticking Noise. There's no question that somebody is profiting from the Potter characters in Potter Puppet Pals, mostly, it's not J.K. Rowling.



Almost 15 years ago, the United States Supreme Court carved out a niche for derivative works of parody in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. You might remember this as the 2 Live Crew, "Pretty Woman" case. Against all odds, 2 Live Crew won that case, and later settled with Rose Acuff music. In true youtube style, here's a link to a video that's derivative of 2 Live Crew's derivation of Roy Orbison's Pretty Woman. That's the second derivative, and the second derivative is when my head exploded in Calculus class. So that's where I'll stop.