'Potter' fans put hex of a boycott on Warner Bros.

News Media Commentary
Title:	'Potter' fans put hex of a boycott on Warner Bros.
Commentator:	Elizabeth Weise, USA TODAY
Date(s):	February 22, 2001
Venue:	online
Fandom:	Harry Potter
External Links:	'Potter' fans put hex of a boycott on Warner Bros.
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'Potter' fans put hex of a boycott on Warner Bros. is a 2001 article in USA Today.

From the Article

One might think Harry Potter's biggest fans would be thrilled that a Potter movie is opening this fall, but instead, they're organizing a worldwide boycott of merchandise featuring the fictional boy wizard. The reason: Lawyers from Warner Bros., a subsidiary of AOL Time Warner, which purchased the rights to the Harry Potter trademarks and copyrights for the film, have been sending letters threatening legal action over copyright violations to kids who have created fan Web sites.

"It really got me mad," says Heather Lawver, 16, of Reston, Va., a site creator and boycott organizer. One girl, Lawver says, "was afraid these lawyers would come banging down her door and take away all her family's money. I was like, 'OK, this has got to stop, now!' I've never liked seeing kids getting bullied."

So she and Alastair Alexander, 33, of London, have launched the Defense Against the Dark Arts project (www.potterwar.org.uk) to fight for fans around the world. "We're a voice for them, because most of the kids were too afraid to do anything," Lawver says.

This is the latest skirmish in the ongoing battle over copyright and trademark on the Web, and companies seem increasingly willing to sue for any perceived infringements.

Not only have for-profit cybersquatters been targeted, but so have fans creating online tributes to such pop culture icons as The Simpsons, Star Trek and The X-Files.

The letters say Warner Bros. wants Potteresque Web addresses turned over because they are "likely to cause consumer confusion or dilution of the intellectual property rights."

"It caused considerable alarm here, I can tell you," says Alan McCaw of Taunton, England, whose 13-year-old son got one of the letters three days after posting a Potter fan page.

"Their concern was that we would make money from the site or there would be pornography on it. But they fired off this letter without looking at the site," McCaw says. "It was obviously a fan site, nobody making money. It was just kids who loved Harry Potter."

The letters have driven young fans to remove many fan pages, including www.harrypotterfan.co.uk and www.harrypotterfaq.com.

After her friends were threatened, Lawver, the creator of a site called www.dprophet.com (named for The Daily Prophet, a magical newspaper in the Potter books), says she had had enough and decided to organize the boycott.

Pamela Samuelson, an intellectual-property expert at the University of California-Berkeley, says such "expressive uses of trademark" are generally beyond the scope of the owner to control; even anti-cybersquatting laws protect only against bad-faith, for-profit registrations of trademarked domains.

"Our intention was never to harass fans," says Warner Bros.' Diane Nelson, who adds that letters are no longer going out en masse. "The tone of the letters did not take into account that Harry Potter is unique, and many of the recipients were innocent, young fans," she says. "We would encourage anyone who believes they received it erroneously to contact us ."

But Lawver isn't satisfied.

"They've scared the living daylights out of these kids," she says. "What are they going to do to apologize?"

Fan Commentary

Posted by: bkdelongTLC

USA Today has an article about PotterWar and DADA. Although interestingly, very little about Ms. Fields. Similar to previous responses, WB has this to say:

“Our intention was never to harass fans,” says Warner Bros.’ Diane Nelson, who adds that letters are no longer going out en masse. “The tone of the letters did not take into account that Harry Potter is unique, and many of the recipients were innocent, young fans,” she says. “We would encourage anyone who believes they received it erroneously to contact us .”

Very interesting considering if you read the letters from Warner Bros. to Claire’s lawyer they don’t appear to be backing down. An “intellectual-property expert” from UC Berkeley echos sentiments similar to mine:

Pamela Samuelson, an intellectual-property expert at the University of California-Berkeley, says such “expressive uses of trademark” are generally beyond the scope of the owner to control; even anti-cybersquatting laws protect only against bad-faith, for-profit registrations of trademarked domains.

If you believe you received one of Warner Bros. letters erroneously, contact Diane Nelson at [email protected].

A year ago today I picked up a two week old USA Today that was folded open to page three in the Life section. It was sitting on the coffee table and I was getting ready to toss it without a second thought. The little blurb in the upper right hand corner caught my eye. It was the reason I had saved it in the first place, a story about web publishing and fan fiction. I thought “oh yeah, I meant to check these sites out.” I don’t remember the other site but FFN was the first one and happily, I entered the URL. I was back in writing mode after a several year drought and thought this would be a cool place to put out some of my work. I really knew nothing about fan fiction. I had just finished reading all 4 HP books the first time and was looking for anything to read to pass the time until number five came out.

[...]

Fate in the form of a little USA Today Article brought me to this fandom. I, for one, am actually surprised I’m still here a year later, usually I would have gotten bored by now and moved on to some new obsession. I guess it’s because of the people I’ve met that I’m still here, the people I call my friends and hope to meet someday in RL.