Monday, September 8, 2008

LESSIG WEPT: So, the fine Southern District of New York issued an order blocking publication of The Harry Potter Lexicon earlier today. This isn't a place for legal analysis, but since I practice in the area, and because of the pop cultural hook, I'll say the court seemed to get it right. I'm a big fan of a robust concept of fair use and transformative use (heck, lord knows what this blog would be were it not for fair use), but this seemed to me to cross the line--the opinion lays out an abundance of entries in the proposed Lexicon that are almost word for word from the books. I'm not sold on the analysis of it bring a direct infringement and the cursory rejection of it as a "derivative work" (my view is that it's probably an infringing derivative work), but this seems to me a fair and right opinion.

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