The Fair Use Doctrine

[Carol]

Carol earlier:

> > Anyway, the judge sounds like a man of sense. Maybe *he* should
sit down and compare a page or two of the Lexicon to the relevant
pages from JKR's books. Better yet, he should finish reading SS/PS
(even the Scholosatic [cringe--Of course, I know how to spell
"Scholastic"!] edition would do, but of course the Bloomsbury edition
would be better) and at least sample some chapters from the other books.
> 
> Tonks:
> 
> lol. I can just see that poor Judge, who apparently did not like the
book that he did half read being forced to read the whole series. He
said that the names and places were geberish. I wonders if he were
thinking of Lord of the Rings instead. I could never get into that
series because of all of the strange names that Tolken just made up
and I could not pronounce or remember. But Harry Potter names?? <snip>

Carol responds:

Well, JKR's names are often puns or clues (Remus Lupin, for example),
but the judge doesn't seem to have caught that. It's odd since he
seems to be a fan of Dickens that he doesn't not how Dickensian JKR's
names tend to be. As for Tolkien's names, far from being something
that he "just made up," they're based on invented languages with a
solid foundation in linguistic principles. Sindarin is based on Welsh
and Quenya (Noldorin) on Finnish. (Icelandic comes into play
somewhere, but I can't remember.) JKR's names have some basis in
mythology (and astronomy for the Black family) and some in her love of
wordplay and her idiosyncratic sense of humor.

Re the judge's remarks, which I snipped because I've also read the
article, I'm sure he'll make a wise and fair decision, and I'm equally
sure that whatever he decides, the losing side will appeal. And I'm
also fairly sure that we'll start hearing of similar cases involving
other authors with an Internet fanbase. It's a whole new world out
there, very different from 1976, when the Fair Use Doctrine was first
 codified. (Before that, rulings in copyright cases were based on
judicial rulings and legal precedent.) 

My concern, however, is for the future of printed books about
published authors and the question of whether a book like the Lexicon
(which is almost certainly *not* 91% JKR's own words, pie charts to
the contrary, even without the essays) is considered fair use.

BTW, you'd think that Steve V. would have written to the permissions
editor at Bloomsbury rather than to JKR herself when he first
contemplated publishing a print edition of the Lexicon. Wonder why he
didn't?

Carol, hoping that this post contains no glaring typos like "Scholosatic"!