Some Serious Qualms With Professionalism.

[red-rose-remix.livejournal.com]

*twitch*

Rowling, Lexicon, and Oz.

Dunno how many of you have followed the lawsuit between Rowling and Steven Ark, and I haven't personally been following it that closely. I'm bringing it up here, actually, because it's reminiscent of the LKH vs. Stephen King post from yesterday. (Or the other day. Concept of time fails me.)

What I've read about the suit is that JKR is suing because SVA is publishing a lexicon without her consent -- not a creative commentary, not speculation, but blatantly taking information he does not legally have a right to publish and publishing it. It's basically all the information that was on his website only between the covers of a book and intended for profit. His fandom colleagues, notably the Floo Network, decided to end their professional connection to him because they recognize his decision as wrong. Fandom knows he screwed up. Rowling knows he screwed up. I think even he's figured it out by now.

How's this relate to the purpose of this community?

Orson Scott Card, the author of Ender's Game, is basically trying to make Rowling sound like an LKH-type loon.

Hilariously, he's doing exactly the sort of self-righteous behavior we'd expect from Laurita, only with better spelling and punctuation (and about as much research).

It's a fact of life that stories will, inevitably, bear strong resemblance to previously written stories, whether the author of the later story read the former work or not. "Individual with sucky home life discovers they are Special, goes to learn Special behavior with other Specials, and is discovered to be some sort of Chosen Special who will defeat the Big Nasty Evil Thing" is one of the oldest stories ever. You know why? Because no one cares about the life of the person the Chosen Special happened to buy groceries from. That's material for short stories (and, these days, fanfiction) extrapolating on a small life touched by fame but ultimately didn't really feel much change for the interaction.

Card sounds like a whiny brat, and he's probably more pissed that his books didn't warrant the same attention as Rowling's -- thus the unjustified hissy-fit. I am totally floored at this man's behavior.

Honestly. What happened to writerly professionalism? Or is this a side effect of living in Ivory Towers? (Or do those towers just come with the territory?)

Comments

[polymexina.livejournal.com]

does anyone even care what card thinks anymore? after he was all teh gey iz teh suxx0rs, i thought everyone agreed he was crazy and irrelevant.

[red-rose-remix.livejournal.com]

I missed that announcement; when was he all teh gey iz teh suxx0rs (omg I cannot type l33t without twitching >.o)?

[chaosakita.livejournal.com]

Then we have to add to the fact he called Stephanie Meyer the "next J.K. Rowling" for Time magazine...

[dameruth.livejournal.com]

What surprises me most is that Card doesn't seem to "get" the difference between a free fansite and something being sold for a profit . . .

[maladaptive.livejournal.com]

First I thought, the irony of Card accusing anyone of being a loon is hysterical. Then I read it.

...Lordy lordy, not only is he an asshole, but an asshole who doesn't even know what he's going on about. And he's so smug about being ignorant, too.

[belledewinter.livejournal.com]

Well, if someone intended to publish something that included about 90% of things I'd written, without a single change, I'd be pretty pissed as well. What's so hard to understand? :/

[baeraad.livejournal.com]

Orson Scott Card is siding against JK Rowling?

...

... gaaah! Now how am I to know what to think about the issue? I hate both of those assholes equally much! Oh, why can't people I despise have the decency to be on the same side so that I can just be on the opposite one?

I may actually have to decide what to think based on which side is actually right, not just which side I personally like. That's most out of character for me.

[red-rose-remix.livejournal.com]

*amused*

Out of curiosity: why do you dislike Rowling?

[red-rose-remix.livejournal.com]

It's been several years since I read any of his work, so I can't really draw a comparison between his works and Rowling's (as much as I enjoy the HP books, there's a distinct absence of style to it -- which works, and probably made them more accessible, but could get rather dry).

To justify the declaration of jealousy: He's insisting Rowling used his ideas, and he's getting really titchy about it and not even bothering to research his own points before attacking. It smacked of jealousy when I was reading it because he emphasised Rowling's 'borrowing' of others' ideas over the actual problem (which isn't about borrowing ideas at all; it's about copyright law when reprinting published material without consent).

(X3 I laughed when I read Mieville's criticism of Tolkien. I don't agree, exactly, but I laughed all the same.)

[cicipsychobunny.livejournal.com]

Terry Pratchett called Rowling out on her stupidity

Wait, what? How did I not hear of this doubtless most awesome of smackdowns?

Interesting tidbit (kinda OT)

[queenettefallon.livejournal.com]

Here's an interesting tidbit in all this, or at least I found it interesting.

Anne Rice supports Steve/RDR (http://gawker.com/5006573/in-praise-of-anonymity)

Just let your mind boggle at Miss NO Fanfic supporting RDR/Steve over Rowling. That actually rendered me speechless, at least for a few moments. ;)

Though I admit that I don't believe the issues are as clear cut as they appear at first glance, because if I understand correctly even the Judge hearing the case urged TeamRowling and TeamRDR/Steve to settle the whole thing among themselves. Whether they take his advice or not, I don't know, but by the Judge trying to get them to do so, well, that tells me things in this case aren't exactly black and white.

[tenaya-owlcat.livejournal.com]

I work at a university and I've had to go to seminars on copyright law. A lot of the lawsuit will hinge on HOW Ark presents his information. If all he's doing is lifting direct quotes from the book, then yes, he's in the wrong. But if he's defining terms in his own words, he has every right to do so, just like other books that have been published before have done. (Hell I own a book like that.) Even if he WAS quoting, Fair Use law gives him the right to use up to 20% of any given work without repurcussions.

I don't like that Card posted a diatribe against Rowling... I don't think that was professional. It smacks of LKH's rants against negative fans or Rice's rant on Amazon. But that doesn't mean that he doesn't have a little bit of a point.

[red-rose-remix.livejournal.com]

The problem is that SVA isn't rephrasing anything -- as you said, he's lifting information directly from the books. It's encyclopedic and not in any way a commentary or a critique; he's just reformatting the information and reprinting it without permission.

[bluesauce.livejournal.com]

Eh, he's frakkin' nuts. This is the same guy who thinks that The Sixth Sense ripped him off, because it's a story about a boy who sees dead people and one time he wrote a story about a boy who sees dead people(and there the similarities end).

[othellia.livejournal.com]

I like the Ender's Game series, and his characterization book was pretty decent, but this... I think that he's kind of missed the point. It's not that Ark is writing an unofficial HP book and making a profit from it (because there are already a ton of those out on the market), it's that he's writing an encyclopedia that has very little of his own input if not any at all, and that encyclopedia is already on the internet for people to view free of charge. *has been following case for several months now*

And Card's accusations about how he could make the same parallels if JKR plagiarized of him would only stand valid if say Ark wrote a series about a ordinary person who discovered that they were a mutant, and they went to school with a lot of other mutants but found out that they were a special mu-

Hey! By Card's reasoning, the X-Men guys should be getting after him. XD

Oh! OT but...

[othellia.livejournal.com]

BTW... Yugioh Christmas Carol + HP + Icon = WIN

[daphne-gateau.livejournal.com]

I don't see a connection with LKH here. *shrugs*

Sometimes Rowling belongs in the nutty author category herself. I like her, like her books, but ... yeah. I think she's going a little overboard.

[red-rose-remix.livejournal.com]

The connection I drew was her jumping on King for a statement he'd made and then proceeding to make all sorts of declarations (one of the earlier posts in the comm flogged her commentary). The situation's not exactly the same, but it's one author attacking another without all the information and sounding a bit childish about it in the process, and me being rather unimpressed with the parallels in unprofessional behavior and bringing it up among others who might recognize what I'm talking about.

... Run-on sentence liek wo. Sorry.

[straussmonster.livejournal.com]

I think the transcripts are out (http://www.leakylounge.com/WB-JKR-vs-RDR-SVA-Part-1-t61169.html&view=findpost&p=1591595#entry1591595)...

[moonsinger.livejournal.com]

Writers are human; that's a newsflash. Seriously, writers are egotistical (I can say that I'm a writer), so not shocked that he's being a jerk.

As for Rowling, damn right she should sue the guy for lifting her work and calling it his own. Unless she allows him to publish this work, he shouldn't be allowed to. You can't let someone do that sort of thing or copyrights mean nothing, and intellectual property can be easily stolen. Personally, I'd be doing the same thing should someone steal my work (should it ever be published).

[red-rose-remix.livejournal.com]

THANK YOU.

The point that seems to be missed the most here is that the guy's breaking the law, regardless of who's richer.

Hahaha, and yes, writers are most definitely human and can be very egotistical. Card, Rowling, and our dear LKH are fine examples.

[anycah.livejournal.com]

It's more annoying when you realize he has posted screeds against fanfiction and claiming that he'll sue if anyone attempts to make profit from said fiction.

It's a delightful shade of hypocrisy.

More understandable if you've listened to him bitch about how popular Star Wars is, and how he stuff should be as well read because it's better. Man has an insane ego problem.

[wyrdmuse.livejournal.com]

Where's a WAAAAAMBULANCE macro when you really need one?

[saucyirishlass.livejournal.com]

Completely off-topic, but I love your icon so hard.

[evewithanapple.livejournal.com]

I followed the cause vaguely over the past few months, and while I think Rowling has every right to sue after she politely told SVA to back off, the whole "I may never write again!" *handstapleforehead* made me roll my eyes. As for Card, all I know about him is that he once argued that gays shouldn't complain, because they had marriage rights . . . to marry people of the opposite gender. Oh, and I gave up on the first Alvin Maker book because the timeline/POV switches were so haphazard.

[cicipsychobunny.livejournal.com]

*shrugs* I think Card makes some decent points. For a start, if we're going to decide people can be sued for quoting other works with appropriate credit to the original author, well there goes all those essays I'm meant to be writing this year.

As far as the similarity-problem, he also has a strong point: if White Wolf can try to sue Sony because Underworld was "similar" to White Wolf's work ... well then Anne Rice should sue White Wolf, Hammer Studios should sue Anne Rice, and the government of Romania should sue Hammer.

[red-rose-remix.livejournal.com]

As several other comments have pointed out: SVA wasn't just borrowing quotes (sources cited or not); it was 90% unoriginal text he was trying to reprint. With that kind of reprinting, within the law, he absolutely must have the consent of the original author -- which he didn't bother to get.

*shrug* It seems like a lot of fuss over nothing, but he is breaking the law, even if Rowling's profits won't suffer for the transgression. The law does need to be enforced, regardless of the condition of those breaking it.

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

But obviously the publishers and author of a series ARE going to take legal action against a book that is 90% cutting and pasting from the original text of the series.

Not doing that would be doing all authors and publishers a huge disservice.

[red-rose-remix.livejournal.com]

Who's Charlie Ben? And how'd Card's views change after he died?

^^* The whole reason I shared the link and my thoughts was because I made a mental connection to LKH's Stephen King rant the other day -- one author attacking another for something that really, really didn't warrant an attack at all.

[jassanja.livejournal.com]

I call Rowling nuts in this

Every halfway decent TV series has a inoffical-lexicon (or ten) like that, but because it is super-money-making HP is shall not be allowed because Rowing wanted to write her own lexicon one day but now has to rush it because of the inoffical one?
There is a lot of WTF in this way of thinking

[red-rose-remix.livejournal.com]

As is mentioned all over the comments, the problem is that 90% of the lexicon is unoriginal content. There's a copyright law issue with that. SVA is breaking the law.