Legal
If I was Tara Gilesbie, I'd do something about this. Have you ever heard of a story called 'Harry Potter'? If you have then you'd realize, IT COMPLETELY RIPS OFF MY IMMORTAL.
If you don't know, Harry Potter was made by JK Rowling and there's plenty of copyright surrounding it. So much so that an adult erotic novel of Harry Potter should really be expected? Its pretty rare for one of these knock offs to get sued as its pretty hard to copyright an entire concept of a story. None the less Rowling's lawyers made this legal threat to one adult novel site:
Dear Madam
Harry Potter adult fan fiction
We are a firm of solicitors (attorneys) in London. We have been consulted by our client, Christopher Little Literary Agency, on behalf of Ms. J K Rowling, and by our client Warner Bros, in connection with the Harry Potter adult fan fiction made available by you at URL http://www.restrictedsection.org/splash.html (see enclosed screenshot).
As you are aware, Ms. Rowling is the author of the Harry Potter books. Ms. Rowling therefore owns the copyright in the Harry Potter books. The sexually explicit content of the fan fiction available at www.restrictedsection.org, which is plainly based on characters and other elements of the fictional world created by Ms. Rowling in the Harry Potter books, is a matter of serious concern to our client. In addition, our client Warner Bros, which owns the film and merchandising rights to the children's series of Harry Potter books, is concerned to protect the integrity of its Harry Potter properties. For the avoidance of doubt, our clients make no complaint about innocent fan fiction written by genuine Harry Potter fans.
There is plainly a very real risk that impressionable children, who of course comprise the principal readership of the Harry Potter books, will be directed (e.g. by a search engine result) to your sexually explicit web site, which you will appreciate most right-minded people would consider wholly inappropriate for minors. Plainly the warnings to the effect that children under 18 should not access your website do not in fact prevent minors from doing so. Indeed, such warnings may well serve simply to entice teenagers to your site.
In the circumstances, our clients therefore request you to remove all such material and cease making it available on the internet or by any other means. Would you please let us have your continuation that you will do so by no later than 18:00 GMT on Friday, 20 January 2003.
Yours faithfully
[Private]
As you can see, much of it is fair play as we can all understand that sexually content is not appropriate for minors and there's no complaint about 'innocent' fan fiction writers BUT the site in question was a site which had warnings so isn't it really the duty of parents of these minors to protect them from accessing such? Don't you think sending a legal threat over such a simple story is a little heavy handed? but hey lets focus on the issue at question: Does JK Rowling own the imaginary world of Harry Potter and is she able to govern what is okay for other peoples imaginations add to this?
If J K Rowling owns the imaginary world of Hogwarts then Tara Gilesbie owns her imaginary world of Hogwarts, as despite the name being the same, they're exceptionally different places. One has wizards whilst the other has wizard vampire goths. See the difference? Hence Tara could quite easily say 'hey your imaginary world has wizards and so does mine so WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING YOU MOTHERFUCKER?'
To prove this point lets look at just one character. Lets go with Vampire Potter.
Here is Vampire Potter and Harry Potter (if they were both played by Daniel Radcliffe). Are these edits so vastly different that they would classify as another character? I'd say so mainly as Vampire Potter is a fucking retarded character who is bisexual while everyone knows Harry Potter is very openly homosexual.
Shall we analyse plot? Well in Harry Potter there's a very straight forward plot of childhood friendship, growing upblah blah fighting generic evil wizard blah blah blah. My immortal however has no real plot as characters can just randomly commit suicide and reappear a chapter later and even more bizarrely can travel through time by being shot.
Obviously My Immortal has dozens of hilarious sex scenes so is it 'innocent' anymore? Answer is, who fucking cares as its not Harry Potter by JK Rowling its My Immortal by Tara Gilesbie. If someone just copied and pasted all of Harry Potter and released it on sale as their own book, or made no attempt whatsoever to change any the plot or characters etc then there's an issue of copyright but I would say having the characters go into sexual experiences is a major difference as its very clear from reading Harry Potter that though there is sexual innuendo, there would never be a graphic in depth sex scene. Quite frankly I don't think a lot of people (or at least enough to make a difference) would buy an erotic Harry Potter novel anyway.
Now I'm not Tara Gilesbie but if anyone representing JK Rowling has a complaint about My Immortal then they can fuck themselves and will deserve ridicule. If I was JK Rowling I wouldn't even acknowledge My Immortal was even based on Harry Potter to try and distance myself from the trainwreck. Though its an unlikely scenerio anyone will care or try to claim enfringement, I just thought I'd make a rant about it anyway.
kthnxbai
