Barry Trotter is a series of Harry Potter parodies written by Michael Gerber.

By Lindley Homol

According to Charles Caleb Colton, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. It is not immediately clear whether fan fiction, the creation of new scenes, events, and stories by fans from an author’s original, should be considered a tribute or a travesty. Some authors, notably J.K. Rowling, view fan fiction as a compliment. Others even encourage fan fiction as a harmless, non-profit derivation of published material that, at best, can generate free publicity for the original work. Still other novelists, such as Ann Rice, take a decidedly different view, attempting to bar all use of copyrighted characters and settings from fanfiction sites, believing that fans should create their own original characters and stories.

Although many writers have divided opinions about fan fiction on principle alone, the legal issues surrounding the use of these copyrighted materials only serve to further complicate the matter. According to US copyright law, authors, as the owners of the copyrighted material, have the right to control the publication of works based on their own original material. Based on this law, some authors justifiably believe fan fiction to fall under the auspices of copyright infringement. Copyright law does, however, protect some types of derivative works, parody in particular, under the doctrine of fair use. To further confuse the issue, copyright law does not limit this fair use protection to only types of writing that are specifically mentioned as protected. Fan fiction writers generally use this clause to defend the legality of their creations.

Whether writers believe fan fiction is legally or morally permissible for pure entertainment or not is one issue. Another issue entirely is when a fan writer makes money off of someone else’s copyrighted material. Even notable fan fiction supporter Rowling sees a drastic difference in the use of copyrighted materials for pure entertainment as opposed to profit, raising a lawsuit against the publication of the Harry Potter Lexicon by Steven Vander Ark. The Lexicon is an encyclopedia of Harry Potter’s world that includes lists of spells, characters and creatures. Although the material has been available online on a site Rowling deemed award-winning, the publication of a Harry Potter encyclopedia would mark the first time Vander Ark would make money from the material.

Supporters of the encyclopedia claim that Vander Ark is within his rights to create scholarly source material, since it is not an attempt to adapt Rowling’s work. They further argue that the Lexicon, slated to publish only 10,000 copies, would most likely sell to only diehard fans, thereby not interfering with sales of Rowling’s own proposed Harry Potter encyclopedia. Rowling’s supporters, on the other hand, do not think Vander Ark should make money off of a mere compilation of Rowling’s original characters and creations. The decision in this case stands to set a precedent nationwide in copyright disputes, a decision that even the judge does not seem eager to make. Judge Patterson, who presides over the case, has encouraged both parties involved to settle out of court.

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