I finished reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows earlier today. I won't comment on the details of the story in this post, except to say that it's an engrossing read, and had many clever plot twists. In a later post, I may note some reservations about the Potter series. For now, however, I will only say that any author who can get millions of kids to avidly read 700-page books deserves a tip of my Sorting Hat!
Kudos also to my local Barnes & Noble for their wizardry in handling the 800+ people who showed up to get copies of the book last night. When I arrived, I did a calculation based on what I thought were optimistic assumptions, and concluded that it would take B&N at least 5 hours to get to everyone. They did it in less than 90 minutes.
Scrimegour: "Are you planning to follow a career in Magical Law?"
Hermione: "No, I'm not, I'm hoping to do some good in the world!"
:)
Ah, capitalism.
And it turns out that the magical power he has can do good, and can do evil, but they themselves don't make him happy, or give him the things he truly wants, which is love, friendship, and the satisfaction that he had made the world a bit better, or at least tried to.
And the funny thing, is that we ALL want those same powers, but of course we already have them. JK Rowling created Harry Potter and his entire world out of nothing. That's real magic! We all have the ability to create our own worlds as well, but it doesn't come easy, and even just waving a wand properly take work and skill.
And we miss the true wonders that exist all around us, like listening to music when ever we command, we can fly around the world in one day, communicate with people in other hemispheres instantly, banish cold and heat to make ourselves comfortable and hundreds of other things that just one hundred years ago people would have considered magic.
We live in more a Harry Potter world than we realize, and we are fools for not realizing it.
I prefer this quote, which I like to think applies to our more extreme pro-copyright groups (e.g., the RIAA). It's also particularly amusing after Scholastic tried to threaten Vodkapundit for reselling his early copy of the book:
Bill: "You don't understand, Harry, nobody could understand unless they have lived with goblins. To a goblin, the rightful and true master of any object is the maker, not the purchaser. All goblin-made objects are, in goblin eyes, rightfully theirs."
Harry: "But if it was bought--"
Bill: "--then they would consider it rented by the one who had paid the money. They have, however, great difficulty with the idea of goblin-made objects passing from wizard to wizard. You saw Griphook's face when the tiara passed under his eyes. He disapproves. I believe he thinks, as do the fiercest of his kind, that it ought to have been returned to the goblins once the original purchaser died. They consider our habit of keeping goblin-made objects, passing them from wizard to wizard without further payment, little more than theft."
And the funny thing, is that we ALL want those same powers, but of course we already have them. JK Rowling created Harry Potter and his entire world out of nothing. That's real magic! We all have the ability to create our own worlds as well, but it doesn't come easy, and even just waving a wand properly take work and skill.
But that's the thing - not everyone can create great or popular intellectual property like JK's. The talent to create intellectual property like that is SCARCE, that is why it is so valuable. Which is why intellectual property protections are useful and necessary.
And what's so scary is that so many people don't realize it. JK Rowling went from a single mother on assistance to a multi-millionaire or billionaire or whatever she is now, all because her property and intellectual property rights were honored. But like many wealthy people she'll probably start babbling socialist nonsense and advocating trampling other people's property rights - the ULTIMATE hypocrisy for a wealthy person. "I got where I am because my property rights were honored, but the little people don't need their property rights."
It also felt a little bit like it was guilty of realizing it was the last book and name-checking every character from the series -- but given the climax of the book, that wasn't entirely unreasonable, and it didn't spend too much time on that.
All in all, I really enjoyed the final book. And I have to agree with IS: it was amazing that we had all this hoopla over a book. Kids and adults. Concert tickets, maybe; a new movie release, yes. But I've never seen in my life this much mass excitement over a book being published (*); it's a wonderful sight.
(*) Except, of course, Academic Legal Writing.
Does anyone know anything about Ms Rowling's politics? I don't think you shoudl put words in her mouth. But do get back to us if you find her petitioning Parliament for the abolition of copywrite.
If anyone tried to actually publish one of these stories, they would get sued for copyright infringement. I think that's not so good. We should encourage people to write fiction.
Kudos to Books-A-Million. And kudos to the cop who tipped us off to the fact there was no line at B.A.M.
As of this writing there are 8,243 fanfics on fanfiction.net alone, with 77 surpassing 100,000 words. Several of them are written in series and surpass 900,000 or 1,000,000 words.
The best one I've heard was one of the street book vendors in NYC. On the way down to people watch at the B&N at Lincoln Center, a friend of mine noted one of those tables with a sign saying "Harry Potter here at 12:01AM". Sure enough, after noting the 6 lines wrapping around the block at the B&N, he saw the same table just after midnight with a white van carrying the white and red "DO NOT OPEN" boxes, selling them for $25 each. That's more than B&N was charging, but the line was still 20 people, which is both long enough to show that the books were selling and short enough that it was faster than B&N.
Harry should be holding Malfoy's wand in his right hand.
Right?
As has been noted, really good creativity is rare. Another point is that we want to become engrossed in the vision of a good author, to empathize with the characters. And when an author writes a bad ending to a series, readers get mad! If story telling were as simple as "everybody can do it" nobody would care about bad endings since they could just write their own, but people, with a few exceptions, don't do that. Even though they could theoretically write their own ending, readers want the **author's** vision, not their own.
Not everyone wants to be a writer. In fact that is one of the differences between books, movies, TV vs. interactive games. In the 80's the buzz was that interactive was the future. Movies and TV would all be interactive. Viewers would get to decide the plot twists and endings of everything. That was all bs hype. People reading or watching movies and TV want to be told stories, not have to make them up. If people want to have to create a plot they'll do it in a different context, like MMOG or RP gaming, not watching TV.
Although there are a lot of writers none currently have captured the imaginations of as many as Rowling. One poster in this thread said that is proof that we need to enforce IP laws. I'd say that is a simplistic mis-statement of the lesson the success of Harry Potter shows us. What HP has shown us is that a work doesn't need to be copyrighted for the author's life plus 70 years to make an author wildly rich. In 10 years, HP has made Rowling the richest woman in England (aside from the queen) several times over. And for practical purposes she would be just about as rich even if copyright was only for 14 years.
If anything, the success of HP is an argument for copyright reform not copyright status quo:
Technically, all or most of those fanfics are illegal. I don't think they should be. People are using the frame work of Rowling's work to create additional creativity and add to our culture. That is how culture works, building on the past. We shouldn't have to wait over 100 years before we can build on the culture Rowling's work has created anymore than we should have to buy bricks and wait 100 years before we can build a house with them. We need to find a way to reasonably protect Rowling's work to encourage new writers, to allow reasonable fanfiction to exist legally and to allow old works (14 years +) to be used by future writers as part of our common culture.
Nick
Actually, I believe she's more like the 7th richest woman in Britain but that she is indeed richer than the queen (though estimating the royal family's real net worth is quite tricky).
Or a very good drag queen, but even they stick to rhinestones.
As you read the series in order, it seems pretty clear that Rowlings started with a very small "universe" and then had to seek ways to expand it as she added more books to the series. With each new book, she seemed to be digging herself out of the limitations of the previous one, and yet she seems rather adept at extricating herself from the corners she paints herself in.
I may have misstated, but rather than look it up on the internet I think I'll just try and guess again right after I fire the intern who fact-checks my posts. Perhaps it was that she had the highest annual income other than the queen, rather than the most assets?
Anyways, after a quick Google, it seems I was wrong and that she is only the 13th richest woman in Great Britain and is only worth about $1,000,000,000. I regret the error.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2979033.stm
Finished the book at 7:15am on Saturday, and thank goodness, as my friends and family were gushing spoilers out of every orifice. My very first conversation after getting up Saturday afternoon included three sentences that would have ruined the ending if I hadn't already read it, thanks to my "skip to the last chapter and blab about it" stepfather.
I was disappointed, but I expected to be, as Rowling was becoming obviously overcome with all the things she needed to keep track of and resolve as of the 5th volume. There were a number of contradictions, confusions, and "eh, never mind about that"s throughout the text, and the last chapter and I are not on speaking terms (I may not read that one to my kids, if/when I have any.) But it was no disaster by any stretch of the imagination, and I'm not writing it off or anything (unlike the second and third Matrix and Pirates of the Caribbean films.) It just wasn't as good as I had hoped it could be. See also the stuff I said on Amazon.com, heh.
I did the pre-sold vouchers thing for Book 6, and they cleared out several hundred people by 12:15. The Borders people claim that only Amazon.com can receive money for the books before 12:01, but it seems like an excuse to trap us in there with 3,000 of our closest friends. (Yes, the local Borders said it had that many reservations.)
Went to Borders Express in the mall and had my copy by 12:30.
Should Rowling have to compete with people who used her work and her creativity? She has made a lot of her money off of royalties from movies and other derivative works.
You can allow old works to be used by future writers without eviscerating copyright law. Writers may borrow from her, as she has borrowed from CS Lewis, Tolkien, and many others; they just may not wholly claim her ideas as their own.
I don't propose eviscerating copyright, but I do propose returning the government granted author's monopoly to something closer to the original intent and custom set out in the Constitution. Constitutionally, copyright is the grant of a limited monopoly expressly for the purpose of advancing the arts and sciences. Advancing the arts does not necessarily equal maximizing profits for any individual or corporation. Rowling's success, I think, shows that indefinite copyright is not needed for an author to be successful nor for corporations to make billions since the series is only 10 years old.
Maybe copyright law needs to change (I think it should be shortened, FWIW; 40 years is plenty long, and I'm very willing to discuss going shorter), but we cannot use this case as an example.
Yes, Rowling made most of her money already, but a big part of that was based on selling of things that will have a long lifetime. If copyright laws only lasted a few years, would the studios have been as interested in making and financing the films? Without the films, would the publicity of the book releases have been as great?
(It also tends to over-emphasize the winner-takes-all economy: we don't have room for very many publicity events like this. I'm not necessarily saying that this is bad, but it is a side effect of requiring someone to cash in quickly.)
Granted, Rowling is the exception rather than the rule and it probably isn't good to make policies based on rarities--such as banning the inheritance tax even though no farm has ever been shown to have been lost due to this tax. I think 14 years is more than long enough to make their money back. It covers the initial movie release, cable, internet, DVD and years and years of syndicated TV.
Oy vey. But why would we allow someone a grant of monopoly, for a limited time, except to allow that person to make money and eliminte the free rider problem?
From a constitutional perspective, I agree that Art. I, Sec. 8, Cl. 8 states that the purpose is to advance the useful arts and sciences, but the grant of power to Congress is pretty broad. Copyright and patent laws need only give exclusive right for a limited time to pass constitutional muster. After all, Rowling's books do not promote the progress of science, but we allowed her to obtain copyrights in the United States.
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;
Note that "science" correlates to "authors" and "writings," while "useful arts" to "inventors" and "discoveries." As such, if we take your interpretation that this clause is severely limited by original intent, we would not allow the copyright of any book that does not promote science!
Dan Weber,
Silly question: how can you be sure that she's already made the majority of the money that she will have made off of Harry Potter? Is it not possible that she will continue to reap financial gain from the movies, collector's editions, and derivative works?
Does anyone know anything about Ms Rowling's politics? I don't think you shoudl put words in her mouth. But do get back to us if you find her petitioning Parliament for the abolition of copywrite.
No, I don't engage in constant surveillance of Ms. Rowling's communications, I respect the privacy rights of others. But if she were to say support or condone a situation where someone's property rights were being trampled and violated she would certainly be a hypocrite.
And actually, there are tons of webblogs were people write their own Harry Potter stories. I saw one where Harry Potter meets the Star Wars gang!
I can sing "Stairway to Heaven" acappella on the sidewalks in major cities but I somehow doubt my efforts will be economically damaging to those that own the rights to the song. Same principle for the sites you mention, as long as they aren't causing economic or other damage to the works or the creator no one really has a problem with it.
If anyone tried to actually publish one of these stories, they would get sued for copyright infringement. I think that's not so good. We should encourage people to write fiction.
I disagree. If the individual has creative talent why do they have to directly take the ideas of others? Shouldn't we be encouraging truly novel creative works, rather than ideas directly taken from others.
Advancing the arts does not necessarily equal maximizing profits for any individual or corporation.
Do you realize how Marxist that sounds? I can't understand why libertarians et. al. who are seemingly sensible on economic issues suddenly get Marxist when the subject turns to intellectual property. Is it anyone's business how much an individual profits from creating great value in the marketplace?
Rowling's success, I think, shows that indefinite copyright is not needed for an author to be successful nor for corporations to make billions since the series is only 10 years old.
Not at all. She created the value, why should other people be able to profit from it without her agreement or consent? Why should a public subsidy beyond what has already been collected from her in taxes be created? And her phenomenal success should not effect how the whole class of property is viewed. What about an amateur inventor who labored for decades, with all the costs and opportunity costs that entails?
To the extent that we have the capacity to renumerate those who create value, yes. An individual's profit is directly correlated to value in the marketplace. That which has great value to people or value to a great number of people will reap large financial rewards. Not all of IP is concerned with giving back development costs - otherwise, we would compensate everyone the same amount of money for their inventions and writings, no matter how useless or trite. That's a sorry state of affairs!
The eight hours that I spent reading Book 7 were among the most enjoyable I've had in a while - and, at $23 for eight hours of entertainment (plus, of course, discourse about the book before and afterwards), Deathly Hallows is a bargain. Whatever JK Rowling earns from her books is well-deserved: she has given literally millions of people hours of entertainment and enrichment.
As for her earning it in ten years: so? One could just as easily point to Van Gogh, whose works were not appreciated until after his death, to encourage the lengthening of IP protection (under the theory that at least one's descendents may profit as if the author had achieved fame within his life). JK Rowling is the exception that proves the rule, here.
Well, sometimes, yes. Is war profiteering illegal? Price fixing? Dumping? However, in this instance you are right, it isn't the government's business how much a profit is made. Thus, the potential profit that can be made or lost by the length of copyright--a government granted monopoly--is irrelevant to any argument to how long copyrights should be since copyrights exist for the sole purpose of advancing the arts and sciences. You are inadvertently arguing for my point rather than against it. Ironic, that.
What, are we all wearing some sort of scarlet letter "L" on our chests? Are you so arrogant to think that you have stumbled into a den of Libertarians where you are the sole "free thinker." This is a very politically diverse forum, not a Communist Party Cell that you have infiltrated.
Now, back to the point. The United States Constitution--surely you've heard of it--expressly allowes congress the power to grant limited monopolies (i.e. patents and copyrights) solely for the advancement of the arts and sciences. Note that the word "profit" does not appear there anywhere. My point that the advancement of the arts and sciences does not necessarily equal maximum profit is a factual one not a Marxist argument and it is one that relates to the constitutional role of copyright.
And she has your money, so that really isn't an argument for excessive copyright terms.
Well, actually, no. She hasn't given people anything. What she has done is sold people entertainment. Nothing wrong with that, but how long should the government grant a total monopoly on her expression of ideas? 14, 30, 80, 150 years. Right now there are some works from as far back as 1888 that are still copyright! Exactly in what way does having a work from 1888 being copyrighted advance the arts and sciences and encourage those authors to create new works?
Do exceptions really prove rules? Is there an exception to 2+2=4 that proves the rule? Or is that the exception to the "that is the exception that proves the rule" that proves that exceptions prove rules?
Other people could sell copies of the first book, but they couldn't make new books that featured those existing characters. (They could make appearances just fine, as long as market confusion didn't happen. Which I realize gets kind of circular, because until it happens the market will be confused.)
I also wonder this re: what would happen to Disney if their copyrights lapsed? People could stamp out "Steamboat Willie" to their heart's content. But they couldn't stamp
Mickey Mouse's picture on the t-shirts they wanted to sell, could they? No more than I could open my own "Wendy's" restaurant that sells old fashioned hamburgers. . .
We basically agree. When I said "Is it anyone's business..." I was referring to those who want to weaken IP rights when they enviously eye her earnings.
Thus, the potential profit that can be made or lost by the length of copyright--a government granted monopoly--is irrelevant to any argument to how long copyrights should be since copyrights exist for the sole purpose of advancing the arts and sciences. You are inadvertently arguing for my point rather than against it. Ironic, that.
Not quite. You seem to be claiming that "advancing the arts and sciences" is mutually exclusive from profits, when in fact it is the preserved profits that provide the incentives and motivation to advance them.
The "monopoly" characterization is yours, the actual wording characterizes it as a Right, capitalized:
"...by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
So one can quite readily arrive at the opinion that the founders were recognizing a right.
What, are we all wearing some sort of scarlet letter "L" on our chests? Are you so arrogant to think that you have stumbled into a den of Libertarians where you are the sole "free thinker." This is a very politically diverse forum, not a Communist Party Cell that you have infiltrated.
I just find it curious how many people who support economic freedom - libertarians, some conservatives, etc. - suddenly approach intellectual property from what looks very much like a Marxist angle.
Now, back to the point. The United States Constitution--surely you've heard of it--expressly allowes congress the power to grant limited monopolies (i.e. patents and copyrights) solely for the advancement of the arts and sciences. Note that the word "profit" does not appear there anywhere. My point that the advancement of the arts and sciences does not necessarily equal maximum profit is a factual one not a Marxist argument and it is one that relates to the constitutional role of copyright.
See my comment above. They recognize the right so the profit can drive the advancement.
Nothing wrong with that, but how long should the government grant a total monopoly on her expression of ideas? 14, 30, 80, 150 years. Right now there are some works from as far back as 1888 that are still copyright! Exactly in what way does having a work from 1888 being copyrighted advance the arts and sciences and encourage those authors to create new works?
You were responding to someone else's post here but I'll comment.
It encourages authors and inventors to create new works by greatly rewarding those that create great value. You seem to be operating on some kind of collectivist theory that we should be tailoring IP rights to try to force IP creators to work at whatever pace you decide is the "correct" one. Which would seem to undermine the "great reward for great value" incentive that the market provides. In your approach its planners or bureaucrats deciding and basically capping profits, not the market, which is very socialist.
And what's wrong with great value creation being rewarded, even for hundreds of years? Some businesses like breweries have been operating for that long. Those who create that value should be rewarded, ane be able to do whatever they want with the reward, including passing it on to their relatives, heirs, etc.