Another Summary of Fair Use

[sistermagpie]

<snipping a lot because I just think they're all good points>

> Carol responds:
> I'm not so sure. Since she regards her own views as definitive,
> claiming that the characters don't exist outside her imagination (an
> absurd claim, IMO--they exist on the pages of the printed books and,
> through the imaginative and "transformative" process of reading--in
> the imaginations of her readers as well), so I wouldn't be surprised
> if she challenged a book that "wrongly" interpreted her characters.

Magpie:
That would be an amazing thing to see, I admit. I just wanted to make 
a comment on that one quote of JKR's, which I saw elsewhere, and say 
that while I think she's gone overboard in her control of the 
characters too sometimes, I doubt she meant something as bizarre as 
it sounds in that one line. I assume when she said the things didn't 
exist outside her imagination she just meant that any entry Steve 
wrote had to go back to her imagination and her words because that's 
where they were born. Iow, if he was writing down info on Snape he'd 
have to go to her words because it's not like there was a real Snape 
somewhere he could look up. But the choice of words is kind of 
interesting, that she'd put it like that. One might be tempted to 
consider it a slip where she's revealing how she really feels about 
them!

However, I'm responding to that quote because I actually recently saw 
somebody make the other interpretation of it--that she was saying all 
these characters only exist in *her* imagination despite the fact 
that we've all read the books or seen movies or heard about them so 
that now they exist in all our imaginations--and this person actually 
ocnsidered that a good thing! They seemed to wish JKR could take 
people to court to force them to have the same opinions on the 
characters that she had because she got to decide what they thought.

Just had to mention it because I thought that was completely bizarre!


> Carol responds:
> If that's what they're claiming, they've pretty much lost the case
> already, don't you think? But as I said, I don't think they're
> attacking the Fair Use Doctrine per se. They're challenging the 
claim
> that the Lexicon is protected by the Fair Use Doctrine. 

Magpie:
Yes, I agree that's what they're doing, challenging whether it's 
protected by it to begin with. And you could be right that as a 
reference book it is protected, period.

> Magpie:
> The grey area is more about what this book is, it seems to me, 
rather
> than whether Fair Use should be stretched to cover criticism or
> scholarly works.
> 
> Carol:
> Fair Use doesn't need to be "stretched" to cover criticism or
> scholarly works.

Magpie:
Yes, that's what I was saying. That it's not about stretching, it's 
about proving that the Lexicon book already falls into a protected 
category or an unprotected one. Scholarly works and criticism are 
already protected.

-m