Where's the Grey? (was: That case and that book)

[Carol]

Lee wrote:
>
> This weekend, on a visit to a bookstore (a rare treat, as there are
very few well-stocked English bookstores in Taiwan), I perused a
number of guides, encyclopedias and concordances, including the following:

<snip>
> David Day, The Illustrated Tolkien Encyclopedia
> David Day, The Tolkien Bestiary
> Michael Drout, J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical 
> Assessment
<snip>
> George Beahm, The Essential Tolkien Sourcebook: A Fan's Guide
> Lois Gresh (herself an SF and fantasy author), The Fan's Guide to
The Spiderwick Chronicles (specifically bills itself as "unauthorized").
> Also by Lois Gresh, The Ultimate Unauthorized Eragon Guide
<snip>

Carol responds:
I would think that the fan guides and encyclopedias would be most
relevant, particularly those that are unauthorized. The question is,
how much copyrighted material do they contain and how much, if any
(for example, the illustrations) was used with permission. (an author
can write to the permissions editor of the publisher of the original
work and request permission to include, say, an illustration or a song
or poem, without obtaining authorization from the copyright holder to
write the work itself. The book will indicate somewhere that the
material is copyrighted, mention the copyright holder, and include the
words, "used with permission.") Sometimes, permission also requires
the payment of a fee.

The "Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment,"
sounds like a different kind of work altogether, a compendium of
critical analysis of articles and essays that would themselves be
copyrighted and require permission to use in an anthology, not from
Tolkien's estate but from the author or publisher of the article. The
articles or essays would have been protected by fair use when they
were originally published, but an editor or compiler couldn't use them
without permission.

Lee K: 
> And specifically HP-related:
> 
> Kristina Benson, The Unofficial Harry Potter Encyclopedia
> Colin Duriez, The Unauthorised Harry Potter Companion
> David Colbert, The Magical Worlds of Harry Potter
> Aubrey Malone, An A-Z of Harry Potter
<snip>

Carol:
The first two would certainly be worth comparing to the Lexicon. Why
not compare their entries on, say, Sirius Black or Peeves or the
Sorting Hat (the first two actually mentioned by JKR) to compare the
amount of quotation involved? In the case of the Sirius Black Lexicon
article, you need to follow a link to a separate page of quotations
involving SB.
> 
Lee K:
> But after perusing the Justitia document Alla linked to, I'm left 
scratching my head and wondering where the alleged grey area is in 
regard to the RDR/SVA guide. My own eye can't find any relevant
distinction from any of the guides I browsed through. And Steve's work 
> appears to contain fewer verbatim citations than <snip> than
Benson's "unofficial" HP encyclopedia.
> 
> Can anyone enlighten me on what's so grey about this case? And why
JKR doesn't seem much bothered by any of the other unauthorized HP guides?

Carol responds:

I've pointed out a few articles in the Lexicon that do seem to contain
an inordinate amount of (properly cited) quoted material, though no
plagiarism that I can see, and certainly the claim that 91 percent of
the site consists of JKR's word is false. Even 50 percent is
stretching it, and I'm not including critical essays that probably
wouldn't appear in the print version of the Lexicon.

Since I don't have access to any of the books you cited (I do have
some Tolkien books, but they're all critical analysis of some sort), I
can't compare them myself. So my question to you is, do the books you
cited, particularly the two unauthorized HP encyclopedias, contain
anything along the lines of 

http://www.hp-lexicon.org/wizards/siriussez.htm

which contains, for example, a long extract from SWM, along with a
number of other quotations and no critical commentary?

The article itself falls within acceptable guidelines, IMO, meaning
that it's covered by Fair Use, but pages like this one constitute what
I consider to be the gray area.

Carol, using American spelling for "gray area" though I like "grey" better