Willy the Wizard vs. Harry Potter

Robert Scott Lawrence — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 18:12:42 +0000

Nothing breeds lawsuits like success. Apart from The Bible and the complete works of William Shakespeare, nothing has captured the hearts and minds of a generation of readers like the Harry Potter saga. In our modern age, of course, the price of fame is being subject to calumny and accusations of plagiarism, copyright infringement, and outright character theft. Although murmurings were made as far back as 2004 that elements of Harry Potter were contained in Adrian Jacobs 1987 book Willy the Wizard, the allegations were dismissed out of hand and the subject of much pooh-poohing in the literary community. Indeed, some commentators even went so far as to denigrate poor Willy as a poorly-written bit of fluff, and Potter author J.K. Rowling claimed never to even have heard of the book — which, in truth, was little known before the trustee for Jacobs’ estate filed suit against publisher Bloomsbury and Rowling in the UK last year. This week, the trustee has initiated the first of what appears to be a multi-continent litigation strategy by suing US publisher Scholastic in district court in New York amid widespread rumours (vigorously denied) that J.K. Rowling’s literary agent was actually Jacob’s agent as well.

At this point in the litigation the parties still are engaged in mudslinging, with Bloomsbury issuing statements claiming that Willy the Wizard was a “very insubstantial booklet running to 36 pages which had very limited distribution” and was of a “very poor quality,” and partisans on Willy‘s side saying all the nasty things you would expect about J.K. Rowling. I confess to not having read Willy the Wizard, nor engaged in a line-by-line comparison of the sections which are claimed to have been purloined, so I cannot opine with any personal authority about the quality of the claims being made — although I do find it difficult to believe that J.K. Rowling’s expansive universe of characters had its specific genesis in this slight tome. (Perhaps that merely reflects my respect for J.K. Rowling’s achievement in helping my children learn to read, and the pleasure I have taken in reading along with them). As I said, fame paints a target on your back for the hungry pack. To date, Harry Potter has beaten back all those who claimed to be his progenitors. You will, of course, recall that in 2002 at the height of the Harry Potter frenzy (when every 10-year-old in America seemed to be reading the new Potter book), Rowling successfully defended herself against a plagiarism claim made by children’s author Nancy Stouffer. Perhaps Willy will end up getting sanctioned just as Stouffer did for making up a false claim. We’ll have to wait and see if the truth will out, or remain forever lost in the shadows of Hogwarts and the Forbidden Forest.

When Is Re-Mixing Copyright Infringement?

Robert Scott Lawrence — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 22:51:01 +0000

Helene Hegemann is pushing the limits set by writers like James Joyce (the original Mr. Cut-and-Paste) by freely grabbing content from other writers — in some cases, entire scenes — and appropriating it for her own use. This pastiche or collage style of writing has pushed hot buttons in the ongoing debate about what constitutes copyright and plagiarism in literature. Some writers claim that the practice is so commonplace that it is simply part of the creative process — that the living inevitably borrow from the dead — and that it has been going on from time immemorial. Shakespeare, as any college literature student knows, borrowed heavily from other playwrights. Hamlet, for example, is very like Saxo Grammaticus’ Gesta Danorum; Romeo and Juliet is said to be based on Arthur Brooke’s narrative poem The Tragical History of Romeo and Juliet; and King Lear is based on the story of King Leir in Historia Regum Britanniae by Geoffrey of Monmouth. Borrowing plots in this way was common at the time, and after Shakespeare’s death playwrights promptly began borrowing from his works as well.

Several years ago, Jonathan Lethem wrote a brilliant article defending the use of “borrowing” by writers in their pursuit of new creation, arguing that creation itself necessarily calls upon the inchoate melange of what one has read over one’s life as an unconscious source of style, language, allegory, sentence structure, plot, and pacing, and that — in a sense — imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. But now writers such as Hegemann and David Shields — whose new novel “Reality Hunger” is built almost entirely of quotations from other writers and thinkers — are pushing the boundaries as to what is appropriate as borrowing, and casting the question of copyright infringement in a different light. When is it plagiarism and not merely exercise of artistic license for transformative purposes? When does fair use become foul? We’ve seen what has happened to the music industry as it has been pulled kicking and screaming into the future by DJs and artists who use sampling techniques to create their own unique sound, and it was only a matter of time before the issue jumped media to stodgy old print. But where is the line going to be drawn? I suspect that the answer does not lie in the simplistic question “To borrow, or not to borrow,” but rather in litigation reminiscent of Bleak House, which will leave everyone unhappy.

For a more in-depth look at what Hegemann and Shields are attempting to accomplish, see the recent article by Randy Kennedy in the NY Times.

Who Is Your Lawyer? » plagiarism

Willy the Wizard vs. Harry Potter

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