Wednesday, June 18, 2003

Harry Potter and the Copyright Lawyer Use of Popular Characters Puts 'Fan Fiction' Writers in Gray Area While J.K. Rowling was finishing up her latest Harry Potter sequel these past three years, so was Christina Teresa. From her third-story apartment here, Teresa typed out a 250-page novella that she posted on the World Wide Web. In the world she created, the dreaded Professor Severus Snape -- the greasy-haired, big-nosed misfit who is Harry's nemesis -- turns out to actually be a good guy trying to infiltrate the evil forces that threaten the wizarding world. The story, posted on Sugarquill.net, was an instant hit, attracting thousands of readers from around the world. As fans await the June 21 release of Rowling's fifth novel about the magical boy with the trademark lightning scar on his forehead, they can find tens of thousands of stories online about what the boy wizard is up to next. In the past few years, a curious literary genre known as "fan fiction" has been flourishing. The term refers to all manner of vignettes, short stories and novels based on the universes described in popular books, TV shows and movies. Similarly derived works are appearing in music, where fans are using their computers to mix songs from popular artists into new works that they call "mashups." Movie fans are taking digital copies of films such as the "Star Wars" epics and creating alternate endings or deleting characters such as the much-maligned Jar Jar Binks. The explosion of these part-original, part-borrowed works has set authors of fan fiction against some media companies in a battle to redefine the line between consumers' right to "fair use" and copyright holders' rights to control their intellectual property. posted by Jason Kenney Wednesday, June 18, 2003 - - Post a Comment Comments: