Rowling Sues Community Group
Submitted by mwilliams on Fri, 2007-10-12 14:55.J.K. Rowling, Bloomsbury and Warner Brothers, have launched court action against a community group in India who created a life-sized Hogwarts castle. The display was to be part of a Hindu religious festival. The group says it had no idea that permission from the author was required.
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William Patry one of the U.S.'s leading copyright lawyers (I believe he works for Google, and did work for Creative Commons) has some commentary on the case:
http://williampatry.blogspot.com/2007/10/copyright-owners-castle.html
Rat's Reading - http://reading.kingrat.biz/
I find this sad.
Maybe if they had asked permission there might not have been a problem.
Its a tricky one, they did reproduce the castle, even if it is paper mache, and they did make representations of the characters. Now I cant make a representation of Mickey Mouse to display, out of wood, or fiberglass etc, and this would include paper mache and canvas, but I can use Mickey mouse pictures to create a craft decoupage or a collage.
I can however recreate some other mouse as long as it is not too similar. Perhaps they should have tried creating their own castle instead of feeling the urge to use the whole potter theme, including characters.
But drop the fine, issue a warning, and a public reminder, I would like to see the obvious intentions of the community group be taken into consideration and just have the penatly fit the "crime" .
This is just about same old disgusting GREED!
If Rowling had any sense of PR she'd approve of it and then offer to come over to be there, meet kids and sign books. It would be a great PR stunt, lots of media coverage in a country with a billion citizens and a way to connect to her fans in India.
I didn't think she was THIS STUPID!