J.K. Rowling "bashes" unauthorised Harry Potter encyclopaedia
I just posted a little rantlet on this subject in my blog, and thought I'd draw attention to it here for those of you who don't subject yourself to my ramblings on a regular basis. Whoever would have thought that writers would want to protect their own material, eh? Cheeky sods.
4 comments:
I dislike the more agressive forms of copyright protection, such as extending copyright out to infinity just to keep the Disney Company happy (you can bet they aren't doing ti because we scribblers have lobbying clout).
But treading on the rights of an author who is not only alive but still writing is pretty egregious.
On the other hand, I've been meeting more and more people lately who have never paid money for the music they listen to, so I think there is a growing belief that if you put your stuff out into the world, it becomes public property. (And it should. Eventually. But certainly not while the artist is still around.)
Ach, surely we don't need paying for our stuff? The joy of creation is sufficient reward. Who cares if we all starve to death? There will be a whole regiment of imaginative and talented "fanfic" writers to take our places in the garret...
I so agree but got into trouble on a US writers website, where the view tended to be that freedom to write anything you damn well wanted over-rode the author's views.
Plus, according to them, J K R. was only protesting because she was so greedy. The fact her royalties were going to charity seemed to have escaped some.
Words flew.
Funny how artists don't have the right to earn money from what they do, isn't it? One wonders how many of the people Eliza encountered would be happy to work for nowt.
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