First off, if said hypothetical dungeon did exist it wouldn’t contain rooms variously dedicated to Warhammer, punishing infidels, housing mid-level web celebrities in padded cells, and a bestiary of semi-magical creatures. It would not, I repeat, not run for some 2.3 miles and be populated by orcs and goblins in it’s lower reaches. And I certainly wouldn’t be using this hypothetical dungeon to house resources and weapons for a planned armed take-over of the Western United States.

While I am greatly appreciative of Gilgrim’s gift from the ol’ Comic Con de San Diego, I am quite sad about missing it. Not only was Phase II thwarted by Gilgrim’s insistence on being “law abiding” but Neil Gaiman was also in attendance. For those not in the know, Neil Gaiman’s writing ranks somewhere between air and water in the “List of Things I Can’t Live Without.” Of course, I have met Neil Gaiman once, but that was at a signing for Anansi Boys, so that doesn’t really count.

Now, though, I find out that Gilgrim is going to PAX on his company’s dime!

That’s some kind of damn injustice if you ask me.

I mean, great for him sure, but what about Kilian, huh? When’s gonna be my time?

I’m just going to start by excerpting a very large chunk of text, care of Neil Gaiman’s blog:

My 12-year old daughter chose Stardust for a school book report. We purchased it in paperback at Barnes and Noble. From the packaging, it looked like an appropriate fantasy story for her age and her 6th grade teacher approved it. We were very offended to find that it had an explicit sex scene and the word “fuck” in it. The marketing of this book was misleading. Were you intending to mislead children into reading it? Why would you do this?

Nope, not trying to mislead anyone, and I’m sorry you were offended.

Stardust was written and published as an adult novel. In 2000 it was awarded the Young Adult Library Services Association Alex Award given to adult books that young adults enjoy. Because of this, and because of the demand from schools, Harper Collins decided to bring out a Young Adult edition of the book as well. That would be the “Stardust Movie Tie In Teen Edition” up on Amazon these days.

While I’m sure there are many twelve year-olds who would qualify as Young Adults and who can happily read books intended for and marketed for teenagers, just as obviously many of them wouldn’t and can’t, and if you feel yours doesn’t I’m sure you’re right. I’m not as convinced as you are that the sex scene is “explicit”, although the word fuck is definitely there, printed in very small letters. But Stardust is definitely not one of my children’s books, like Coraline or Interworld, or (when I finish it) The Graveyard Book. It’s an adult book, with, in the US, a Young Adult edition as well.

I have to say that Neil’s response was much more evenhanded than mine would have been, were I in his place. I’m not going to argue that the person does not have a right to be offended, because everyone has the right to be offended by anything…that’s just the way things work.

What I take exception to is the fact that this person seems to have assumed that writers have some power over how their books are marketed, packaged, and sold in this country. Newsflash: THEY DON’T. Think I’m wrong? Consider that Harry Potter and the Philosphers Stone was changed to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in the US because the publisher believed it would sell better here with that title, regardless of the fact that the Philosopher’s Stone is an actual item from the mythology of alchemy. The fact of the matter is, even someone like Stephen King probably has little say in how his books are marketed. Publishers are in the business of selling books, and if a publisher thinks he can sell more copies by marketing something as YA when it probably isn’t, he’ll do it, even if the author were to object.

And more importantly, to think that someone would purposefully write a book to mislead children into reading an “explicit” sex scene (and, by the way, Neil’s correct, it’s not explicit unless, I don’t know, you’ve been living in Victorian England for the last decade or two) is probably the most asinine thing I have ever read on the interwebz.

Another thing that seems obvious to me is that this parent is totally unfamiliar with what constitutes “Young Adult” reading these days because in light of some other stuff, I’d say Stardust is mellow.

I’m willing to grant that some of my anger stems from the fact that Neil Gaiman is my personal lord and savior, and I don’t take kindly to anyone attacking him or his work.

But, come on people, if you have a 12 year old who hasn’t ever heard/read/seen/spoken the word “fuck” then either 1. you are in total denial, or 2. your kid leads one terribly sheltered life. Certainly, it is every parent’s right to shelter his or her child. As a parent, however, I question such a decision. I hope to god that when my daughter reaches the age of 12 she can read “fuck” and understand that it is simply a word, it’s power (or lack thereof) is derived completely from how people choose to treat it. It is merely the combination of phonetic sounds that we as a society ascribe some meaning to. And I really hope that she understands that just because society has placed a certain meaning on a certain word does not mean that you must react to that word in the same way.

First off, thanks to c and Kerri. How did I know that the Normalinauts would have my back?

Although, as I watch the site views continue to bump up I was hoping that more people would leave comments. As I said to gilgrim earlier today (via gchat) it’s good for the soul to be told to take your own head out of your ass. And I really do believe that.

But I’ve been thinking more and more about this whole thing because, as an aspiring writer, how this lawsuit plays out may (godz willing) one day effect me and my own “intellectual property.”

Now if this isn’t about the money, as Ms. Rowling has said (and I don’t entirely believe that), and it isn’t about her work being “perverted” in some way (since the HP Lexicon is, essentially, a catalog) then the only thing it can be about, as c mentioned, is control.

Rowling stated in her testimony that the HP books felt like her children. Now, I’m not sure what her children think of that, and by the way it took me nearly a decade…admittedly I wasn’t consistently writing that whole time…to finish my first novel and guess what, given the choice of having to burn the only copy of my book and getting my daughter, guess which one I’d choose in a heartbeat. But that seems like an odd metaphor to me. The fact of the matter is, every writer writes so that people will read his/her writing. It’s that simple. You create something to, essentially, give to other people…and hopefully make a few bucks while you’re at it. Tim Powers (we all know of my love for Powers) says that he is skeptical of any writer claiming not to care how big his audience is. Every writer wants as big an audience as possible. But something odd happens once the writer has finished writing and that manuscript has now become a book that people buy and read. And now I’m going to excerpt from another one of my personal lords and saviors, Neil Gaiman:

(Quick note, the italics are mine)

I once – at the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, in Florida, some years ago – went to a presentation of three papers on my work (one of which is reprinted here), and after each paper was presented, I was asked if I would like to make some reply, which is honestly a bit like asking someone who has just undergone an autopsy if he’d like to talk about the experience. (My replies varied, at least in memory, from “Er, thanks. That was very nice of you,” to an “Er, with respect, if you read the issue you’ve cited, I don’t believe it actually says what you think it does”. But possibly I just smiled and nodded.)

Those were, however – with the exception of pointing out the occasional objective mistake – simply my opinions, and I don’t consider them to be privileged. Once you’ve written something it’s not yours any longer: it belongs to other people, and they all have opinions about it, and every single one of those opinions is as correct as that of the author – more so, perhaps. Because those people have read the work as something perfectly new, and, barring amnesia, an author is never going to be able to do that. There will be too many ghost-versions of the story in the way, and besides, the author cannot read it for the first time, wondering what happens next, comparing it to other things that he or she has read.

That comes from Mr. Gaiman’s forward for a book of scholarly papers written about the Sandman. And while Gaiman is addressing a different topic altogether, the sentiment, I think, is the same. I tried unsuccessfully to find an interview I read some year’s ago with George Lucas. I’ll have to paraphrase, but basically Lucas said that, upon the original publication of Splinter of the Mind’s Eye he realized that the universe he had created was much larger then he thought, and it contained many more stories then he could ever tell, and people wanted to hear those stories. In the same way that Gaiman stated that, once you publish a novel, it’s no longer yours, when you are a George Lucas, or a JK Rowling, you create something so large and complex that connects with people in such a way that you cannot ever be the only one to “control” it.

In her testimony Rowling said that if the HP Lexicon were published that she would then be very discouraged about completing a reference book on her own, and my response to that is, “why?” If anything, I would think that it would motivate her that much more, in an effort to publish the “official” reference guide to HP. Or maybe that’s just me…

But let’s change gears for just a moment. We live in a time when broadband internet connections and digital content are the norm. Consider the digital distribution of both Radiohead’s and NiN’s most recent albums. Both of these groups have fan bases that can be described as “dedicated” (although, rabid might be a better term). I would hazard a guess that the HP fan base is at least as dedicated. Did Radiohead or NiN lose money by releasing new albums for free? No. Did they make as much as they might have by going a more traditional route? Who knows. But what I do know is that each of these bands successfully recognized that we are no longer in a black and white “copyright” world. Are these two instances directly related to the current Rowling v. HP Lexicon battle…no. But I think they are instructive. People are going to (more and more as the years go by, I’d wager) increasingly see copyright and ownership of intellectual property as a negotiable state of existence whether or not Rowling wins this case.

Again, I’m going to refer to Gaiman. His publisher recently agreed to host, for an entire month, a freely accessible full digital version of one of his novels (it was American Gods, his largest by far). You know what happened during that month? Sales of the book spiked!

The HP Lexicon, I am convinced, would not take away from Rowling’s potential to continue earning money off of her intellectual property. That will be, trust me, the defining characteristic of copyright law/decisions in the years to come. Not, did that person use your material, but did that person in some way cause you to lose revenue off of your material. The fact of the matter is, HP does not belong to Rowling alone. It belongs to every one who has read and enjoyed the books. She may feel that the books are “her children” but to the rest of us, they are our friends, and as much as she wants to control them, she can’t. It isn’t the 1800’s and you aren’t Dickens, Ms. Rowling.

My guess is, if the HP Lexicon is allowed to be published it will sell decently, but if you, Ms. Rowling, do actually finish your own HP reference work, that one will be gobbled up like mother fucking manna from heaven!

Ms. Rowling, you created something so unique and special that people connected with it in a deeply emotional way. Take a cue from Lucas, Radiohead and Trent Reznor and let go. You may find it quite freeing. And if that doesn’t help, you can always cry yourself to sleep on a mountain sized pile of $100 bills.

Well, the trial is “over” in that, no more evidence will be submitted or arguments made. Although, both sides will continue to file briefs, and the actual verdict isn’t expected for several weeks. So at least the crying on the stand parts of this story are done with.

Now I’m going to excerpt a bit of Neil Gaiman’s most recent journal post:

Lots of emails from people asking me to comment on the JK Rowling/ Steve Vander Ark copyright case. My main reaction is, having read as much as I can about it, given the copyright grey zone it seems to exist in, is a “Well, if it was me, I’d probably be flattered”, but that obviously isn’t how J.K. Rowling feels. I can’t imagine myself trying to stop any of the unauthorised books that have come out about me or about things I’ve created over the years, and where possible I’ve tried to help, and even when I haven’t liked them I’ve shrugged and let it go.

Given the messy area that “fair use” exists in in copyright law I can understand the judge not wanting to rule, and assume that whatever he says the case will head off to the court of appeal.

It goes on for a bit…I suggest that you read the whole thing.

Anyway, in a little while we’ll know which way the judge has ruled…and then whichever side loses will appeal, then we’ll wait a while for the appellate case, then that decision, then another appeal, then (I’m betting) the Supreme Court. My guess is that this will turn out to be one of the formative cases for Copyright law for the next 100 years.

Me First and the Gimme Gimmes - The Longest Time

Neil Gaiman could direct me to go out, rob several banks, and then throw the money off a bridge and I’d take about 2 seconds to get started. So when he tells me to spread some videos around, I DO WHAT I’M TOLD! That’s just how much I love Neil.

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