[cc-community] fan sites, fair use, and Harry Potter
drew Roberts
zotz at 100jamz.com
Sat Mar 1 13:02:46 EST 2008
On Saturday 01 March 2008 12:28:37 Fred Benenson wrote:
> > though. If the courts actually upheld it, that would mean that CC-NC
> > would also open authors up to unauthorized commercial derivatives of
> > their works.
>
> At best this point is a stretch and at worst it is misleading.
>
> Your reasoning is that if the publisher prevails in publishing the HPL
> on the basis of it being fan work (it was free to create so why
> shouldn't it be free to publish?) that this would set a precedent for
> people publishing fan work and making a commercial profit off of the
> work.
>
> Let's for a moment assume that the HPL is under NC (it's not, there's
> some bizarre copyright claim at the bottom of each page that seems
> very restrictive) and a publisher were attempting to publish it. You
> make the misleading assumption that this would even be possible. If
> the community had previosuly explicitly stated that their work is not
> for commercial exploitation (e.g., publishing) it seems the publisher
> would have a much harder time justifying taking it to market.
> Furthermore, you seem to be assuming that *even if* the work is under
> NC that the existence of a case where a publisher was allowed to
> publish fan work would override whatever license the fans had placed
> on their own work, effectively rendering NC useless.
>
> There's this tendency to imply that NC is both overly assertive (i.e.,
> if you're a blog with AdWords you couldn't possibly post to a NC
> licensed mp3) and that it is also totally toothless (a publisher could
> come in and do whatever they want, ignoring NC).
>
> Like it or not, the HPL community could have probably on a better foot
> with Rowling if they chose a non-commercial license for the lexicon.
This I don't follow. Putting NC on my work indicates that I probably want to
make money from it. Certainly not that I don't want to.
Although some still think putting NC on their work is an indication that they
have no commercial intentions for some reason. I never took this view, but I
have seen it around from time to time.
Unless you are saying that if they put NC on it, the publisher could not have
done this without the project's permission? Is that what the publisher is
doing? Publishing the lexicon without the permission of the people who made
it? I never got that idea from my reading so far.
> It's not free in any sense but it probably would have avoided a clash
> over the work's commercial exploitation.
>
> Maybe it's also a good opportunity for a copyleft license but I
> certainly don't see it as a case study of where NC would fail an
> author's interest.
>
>
> F
all the best,
drew
More information about the cc-community
mailing list