Fan Sites & Legal Action

[Steve Vander Ark]

No: HPFGUIDX 6848

--- In HPforGrownups at egroups.com, "Nick Mitchell" <nick at d...> wrote:
> Hi
> 
> Are you all following what's happening?
> 
> Back in February, I was threatened with legal action from Warner 
Brothers
> regarding my domain name - www.harrypotterisawizard.co.uk
> 
> I ended up agreeing to hand this over to Warner Brothers rather 
than taking
> the case through the courts...
> but it appears public pressure is now against Warner Brothers.
> 


Here's a follow up to that case from Yahoo news. As always, there are 
two sides to every story:

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/bpihw/20001210/en/warner_bros_potter_lett
er_sought_clarity_1.html

(note because of the length of this URL, you may have to cut and 
paste it into your browser)

This was also reported by eonline.com. Warner Bros. states that no 
one has EVER been asked to shut down a site, that all they were doing 
is inquiring into whether the site is set up to make money, in which 
case they WOULD shut it down because it uses a copyrighted name. They 
said that they routinely send such inquiries and that this girl 
decided to make a fuss about nothing. If their side of the story is 
true, the girl sounds like an opportunist to me. I know her site has 
been getting a couple of thousand hits a day as a result of the 
hoopla, up from twenty hits a day before the news broke. It's good 
for business, all this spluttering and hollering. 

So what exactly happened in your case? Sounds like they've 
conveniently forgotten all about it when they're trying to sound 
friendly to the media. Were there any legal actions taken on either 
side? What exactly did they ask you and what did they tell you to do?

If I ever do register a domain for the Lexicon, it won't have Harry 
Potter in the name, I can tell you. But I do see scans of artwork on 
sites all over the place that are clearly violating copyright. Why 
don't they pester those people instead?

Steve Vander Ark
The Harry Potter Lexicon
http://www.i2k.com/~svderark/lexicon