Project 3 Justification Paper

Josie Tarr

Professor Kim Christen

4 May 2014

Project 3 Justification Paper

Hermione Goes to Court:

Project 3 Justification Paper

            For my final project, I decided to combine elements of Unit Three in a unique way. I wanted to try something I never had before, and the idea of fan fiction intrigued me. What sparked this idea was the reading from Madhavi Sunder’s article, “Everyone’s a Superhero: a Cultural Theory of ‘Mary Sue’ Fan Fiction as Fair Use.” According to Sunder, “Mary Sues re-imagine our cultural landscape, granting agency to those denied it in the popular mythology” (Sunder, 597). I felt like fan fiction, including a Mary Sue, would be a great way to expose the inadequacies of copyright law. I wanted to explain current copyright laws and their irrelevancy to our digital culture today. The argument of my project is that current copyright law (1) caters to the interests of companies who profit off of copyrighted works, and (2) hinders amateur creativity, which is crucial for the creation of our culture now.

            To gain an understanding of my argument, we must first examine what culture is. In "RIP:

 A Remix Manifesto” by Laurent LaSalle, our current culture is one where “people participate in the culture around us,” and which acts “as an expression of what came before” (LaSalle). Thanks to the technology available to those with Internet access, the creative process has become more important than the product; consumers are now creators (LaSalle ). In other words, it is fairly easy to take content around us and use it to create something new. The only problem is, according to copyright, these products are known as adaptations—and are illegal (UK Copyright Service). According to Chander and Sunder, culture is understood as "traveling, engaging in both internal and external dialogue along the way" (Sunder 624). Culture is not a fixed thing, and thus the meaning of created things evolves over time as it evolves. Copyright law has simply not evolved along with our digital culture.

            Read/Write (RW) culture, discussed by Lawrence Lessig in “Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy,” is produced by amateur creativity; the "young people of the day" would add to this culture they read and heard by creating and re-creating the culture around them (Lessig 28). Read Only (RO) culture deals only with consumption, not creation.  Sousa, quoted by Lessig, feared that R/W culture would be displaced by this RO culture; however, we can see that this just hasn't been the case. A strong argument can be put forth that today we have expanded the idea of RW culture due to the vast digital tools at our disposal. Today we are re-creating and creating new forms of media from the old, in ways unimagined by those living in pre-internet times. Amateur creativity goes along with the idea that non-professionals could "get together and sing" (Lessig 32). This type of creativity creates RW culture, and needs to be left unregulated, according to Lessig. As we can see by the current copyright legal system, too much control can choke this creativity and cause remix music artists (for example) to go into hiding from legal battles they have no hope of winning.

           Next: what is copyright? According to Lessig, copyright is "the mix of protections crafted by Congress to reward artists for their creativity by creating incentives for artists to produce great work" (Lessig 23). Sousa believed that the part of culture "where commercial entities profited from creative works needed to be regulated more" (Lessig 33). Today, copyright has become a tool used by companies (like Disney) to monopolize ideas (from the past or from other cultures), profit off of them, and then seal them away from being used by anyone else. Copyright is outdated in this digital age where remixing and sampling are people's way of creating media. It "has expanded hugely, particularly in the twentieth century, giving creators ever-greater powers to stop other people from making derivative or secondary uses of their work" ( Keller). But as LaSalle points out, how can we create new culture if we can’t build on and take from the past?

This is where my fan fiction comes in. I decided to use the Harry Potter book series, mostly because the series takes place in recent history (the 90s and early2000s). I discovered that the Harry Potter world is the perfect stage for studying copyright law because most of the technology available to us would be available to the HP characters. Part of what makes effective fan fiction is drawing from the existing world of the piece (in this case, Harry Potter) and making your own work a believable part of that world. To make sure I got all my spells, names, and content right, I consulted the Harry Potter Wiki (www.harrypotter.wikia.com). To include a Mary Sue, the female character Hermione is the main character of my story. In the books, she is the smartest friend, the one that often saves the day, but is only a supporting character. She tends to know everything and gets exceedingly good grades in all her studies. Hermione is a “figure serves to contest popular media stereotypes of certain groups,” in this case, sampling/remixing music artists (Sunder 599). The plot of my story is fairly straightforward: Harry, Ron, and Hermione (wizards and a witch studying magic at the Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry) want to start a band to win a contest. To win, Ron decides they should make a band that makes music that is popular with Muggles (non-wizards, ordinary people), which is remixing and sampling. This type of music hasn’t “hit the wizard scene”, yet. The trio creates a band using songs from a currently famous artist, Deadmau5; they get famous and then get sued by that artist. Hermione elects to go to court, knowing that she (more so than Ron or Harry) has a chance against the artist’s deep-pocketed and experienced lawyers. She studies up before the trial, becoming as familiar as possible with copyright and fair use law.

            In this portion of the story, I explain all of Hermione’s sources of information, as well as what she learns from them. The sources I found for this crucial section of my fiction are the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) (www.ipo.gov/uk), the UK copyright law site (www.copyrightservice.co.uk), and Teaching Copyright (www.teachingcopyright.org). 

            For example: Hermione learns that “fair use is decided by courts on a case-by-case basis” according to the UK’s copyright laws (UK Copyright Services). One of the restricted acts, according to UK copyright law, is adaptation, which is exactly what she, Ron, and Harry have done. They adapted Deadmau5’s music and even sold it for a profit to other students (UK Copyright Services). Hermione realizes this is a big error in the Muggle (non-wizarding) community. Although she and her lawyer try to explain how Hermione wasn’t taught copyright law (the excuse is homeschooling because the wizarding world must be kept secret), the jury still finds her guilty of “Criminal liability for making, dealing with or using illicit recordings” (IPO).

            Deadmau5’s  lawyers have enough money to conduct (and perhaps even fabricate) research showing how Hermione’s band’s min-album Unicorn Blood has hurt Deadmau5’s sales. This directly violates copyright laws, which state that it is illegal to import into the UK “otherwise than for his private and domestic use” (IPO). Hermione, taking the blame for creating the band so her friends wouldn’t get in trouble, eventually gets the maximum sentence for copyright infringement, which is £50,00 and 6 months in prison (section 107(1)(a)+(b), Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988, IPO).

            This fan fiction is an in-depth examination of why Hermione’s remix band could be found guilty of copyright infringement in court, even despite studying and knowing the unclear laws currently in place. Hermione, Ron, and Harry, in an attempt to contribute to and be a part of the Muggle Read/Write culture, make a band that adapts songs and makes them new. They bring their remixed songs to the Wizarding world, as well as spread them around the Muggle world for many to appreciate. In doing so, they accidentally wake the monster that is copyright. Hermione takes on the responsibility as the smart, sassy character that she is, becoming even better-read than her attorney. However, not even Hermione as the Mary Sue character can triumph in court against a rich and famous artist. My goal with this project was to leave readers with the sense that most copyright infringers are simply ignorant of the convoluted copyright and fair use laws in place today. By reading this story, readers get a clear idea of what copyright infringement is, how inadequate copyright law is, and how these laws deter creativity and content creation in today’s digital culture.

Works Cited

Dame-Boyle, Alison. Teaching Copyright. Electronic Frontier Foundation. Web. 4 May 2014.

            Harry Potter Wiki. May 2014. Web. 4 May 2014.

Intellectual Property Office (IPO). Department for Business, Innovation & Skills.10 Feb 2009.      Web. 4             May 2014.

Keller, Daphne. From Paul Miller's Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture. MIT     Press.             2008. Web. 4 May 2014.

LaSalle, Laurent. RIP: A Remix Manifesto. Video. 4 May 2014.

Lessig, Lawrence. Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy. 2010.                                Video. 4 May 2014.

Sunder, Madhavi. Chander, Anupam. Everyone’s a Superhero: A Cultural Theory of ‘Mary Sue’ Fan                 Fiction as Fair Use. Web. 4 May 2014.

UK Copyright Service. UK Copyright Law. 2000-2013, Copyright Witness Ltd. Web. 4 May 2014.