Results tagged “copyright”

Well, they didn't knock him on the noggin like the Tony Awards, but they did play his song "Talk Dirty to Me" without permission. Cityfile reports on the latest in ASCAP/BMI lawsuits filed against New York clubs, saying "Earlier this week, BMI and a collection of labels and artists filed suit against Pianos on the Lower East Side" for playing that tune and others. The companies have been on a rampage, attacking Jay-Z's 40/40 club, Hiro, Cafe Wha? and others, but the site makes a good point: "securing the rights isn't all that expensive. A blanket license from ASCAP, for example, supposedly goes for as little as a dollar a day." Maybe a little more; when we talked to ASCAP VP Vincent Candilora, he told us "the average annual license fee for all bars, restaurants, nightclubs and similar establishments is less than $2.50 a day. With a maximum annual cost of $912.50." Well, the club certainly charges enough for their drinks to cover that cost, no?

The 33-year-old author using the pen name J. D. California, who penned a sequel of sorts to the classic Catcher in the Rye, should have known that J.D. Salinger doesn't take too kindly to phony folk. California's book is described as “An Unauthorized Fictional Examination of the Relationship Between J. D. Salinger and his Most Famous Character,” and prior to its U.S. release it has landed in the courtroom. Unsurprising, since Salinger has even kept the likes of Steven Spielberg from touching his characters. While he hasn't published a new work since 1965, he's done a good job at preserving his old ones (often through lawsuits like this one).

J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros. have won their copyright infringement lawsuit against a web site operator who intended to publish an encyclopedia based on the author's multi-billion dollar fantasy franchise. Today a judge agreed with Rowling's argument that Steven Vander Ark's Harry Potter Lexicon would amount to "the wholesale theft of 17 years of my hard work." Vander Ark and his publisher had contended that the lexicon was a fair use allowable by law for reference books. But today's ruling found that it "appropriates too much of Rowling's creative work for its purposes as a reference guide." The judge also awarded Rowling and Warner Bros. $6,750 in statutory damages, which should finally permit the struggling author to enjoy a modest retirement.

The International Olympic Committee filed a copyright infringement claim yesterday against YouTube for hosting video of a Free Tibet protest at the Chinese Consulate in Manhattan Thursday night. The video depicts demonstrators conducting a candlelight vigil and projecting a protest video onto the consulate building; the projection features recent footage of Tibetan monks being arrested and riffs on the Olympic logo of the five interlocking rings, turning them into handcuffs. YouTube dutifully yanked the video, but it can still be seen on Vimeo. (Be advised; there is some brief footage of bloody, injured monks.)

While a judge deliberates on whether Harry Potter superfan Steve Vander Ark and his publisher violated copyright law by producing a lexicon based on J.K. Rowling’s hit novels, the 50-year-old librarian has simply been trying to keep it together. This week he told the New Yorker all about the trauma caused by the recent trial, during which he broke down in tears.

As the Harry Potter copyright infringement trial drew to a close yesterday, the judge urged the two parties to use their “imaginations” and agree to a settlement. Judge Robert Patterson professed a love of literature and invoked Charles Dickens’s Bleak House as cautionary tale, “A very sad story. Litigation isn’t always the best way to solve things."

The 50-year-old librarian on the receiving end of a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by the Harry Potter author was driven to tears yesterday while testifying in a Manhattan courtroom. Steven Jan Vander Ark (pictured), a former Star Trek fan from Michigan whose exhaustive website The Harry Potter Lexicon would be published in a print version by RDR Books, told lawyers that he was devastated by the lashing he’s received from J.K. Rowling and "the Harry Potter community... This has been an important part of my life for the last nine years or so.”

As detailed yesterday, the proposed book is essentially a print version of a Harry Potter fan site that Rowling previously awarded for excellence in web fandom (something she now “regrets bitterly”). But the website is free, and the billionaire author (along with Warner Brothers Entertainment) claims that a print version, if sold, would amount to “the wholesale theft of 17 years of my hard work.” Rowling went on to dismiss the book as “sloppy, lazy, dire and atrocious,” which is ironic because Rowling once confessed that she consulted the Lexicon website to check facts while writing the Potter series.

Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling is testifying in a Manhattan federal courtroom this morning against a small publisher trying to release an encyclopedia based on her work. In the past, Rowling has been supportive of the fan-based websites that explore her novels, but when RDR Books announced last fall that it would be publishing a book version of the The Harry Potter Lexicon website, Rowling filed a lawsuit claiming copyright infringement.