Re the rewrite of HBP

[heidi]

Have heard of it. Haven't seen it because of previously mentioned downtime & birthday party offline-ness.

I can't criticize it too much as a concept, because I did something similar with OotP - I wrote - and posted here about 18 months ago - an edit of the Veil scene, with Hagrid falling through instead of Sirius. I certainly like it more than what actually happened in the book, although I'm willing to allow that JKR did what she did for plot reasons, grrrr.

I can criticize the execution of it. As I said elsewhere it would've been much more clever to try and do edits in the same 'space' as is in the books as they currently are, then PDF it so people could print it on sticker paper and paste it into their own books - there's no laws that restrict what people do "analogly" with their own copies of books. Then only the nexessary paragraphs would've been posted, and it could possibly be argued that it was a parody of the concept of shipping and of JKR's own after-the-fact changes to her books (changing Flint's year and the wand order issue from GoF).

I've seen that people have called it plagiarism and it's not, though, as the person who posted it said it was JKR's work. It's copyright infringement, in the same way that sharing text files or scans of the book is infringement but it isn't plagiarism. Plagiarism only exists where one claims originality in something one didn't write, and while I didn't see the files myself I understand it said it was written by JKr and edited by... Well, by someone else. That's not plagiarism, per the dictionary definition of the word.

Comments

[hannahmarder.livejournal.com]

I don't know much (well, anything) about the re-write, but is it different from writing an AU fic? I thought that if you wrote something that deliberately changes certain aspects of canon, then it's AU, depending on exactly how much gets re-written. If it's something like having Hagrid fall through the veil instead of Sirius, I would call it an AU. So if this re-write is copyright infringement, why is it that when fanfic isn't?
Hannah

[straussmonster.livejournal.com]

Because it's the novel HBP, with the offending sections cut out and replaced with alternate text. The rest of it is Rowling's text verbatim.

[hannahmarder.livejournal.com]

Oh, I see! Thank you very much, straussmonster.

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

Because, as I understood it, it was word for word from HBP with a few word changes, which maks it closer to an etext of the book itself. Etexts which are created without permission are illegal.

[gunderpants.livejournal.com]

They change substantial other parts of the story too. One of the plotlines changed makes it look like Ginny is lusting after Ron.

Oh those wacky H/Hr shippers!

[oxnardbrian.livejournal.com]

I haven't heard anything about the rewrite -- hmm... But then again, I try to stay out of the "official" loop of the HP stuff -- there is just too much to really pour through, and I just don't have the time or energy for it. Anyway, I wanted to congratulate you on your ability to quibble over semantics with the best of them. And, being a quibbler myself, would like to extend to you the next level of my respect in others: "Mutual Quibblage Respect."

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

Well, for me it comes from being a lawyer. I'm not always as precise with my own language as I'd like but when I read something by someone else and the words don't mean what the person seems to want them to mean...

[oxnardbrian.livejournal.com]

That's what it is for me: I try to be extremely precise with my language and I generally have higher expectations of others' language than I maybe should have.

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

Could you believe I am just now catching up on lj replies? Thanks, belatedly, for the compliment.