{"id":244,"date":"2003-07-01T10:48:57","date_gmt":"2003-07-01T18:48:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2003\/07\/01\/harry-potter-and-the-compulsory-licensing-scheme\/"},"modified":"2003-07-01T10:48:57","modified_gmt":"2003-07-01T18:48:57","slug":"harry-potter-and-the-compulsory-licensing-scheme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=244","title":{"rendered":"Harry Potter and the Compulsory Licensing Scheme"},"content":{"rendered":"

Via Half the Sins of Mankind<\/a>, this interesting Slate<\/i> article <\/a>argues that folks abroad ought to be free to plagiarize Harry Potter <\/i>as much as they want.<\/p>\n

But as trade economists will tell you, trade often works when countries imitate and improve the inventions of others. America invents the hi-fi, Sony turns it into the Walkman, and then Chinese companies make still cheaper imitations.<\/p>\n

This is basically what’s going on in the world of Harry Potter. The English original is clearly the best. The imitators aren’t as good but are cheaper and come out much more frequently (there are already three Tanya Grotter books). There is, in short, a secondary Potter market. Isn’t this the international trading system at its best?<\/p>\n

Moreover, the writers of secondary Potters are probably better at creating versions of Potter suited to local conditions. According to Reuters, at least some Russian children prefer Tanya Grotter to Harry, some on account of her Russian name. Local writers do things to Harry that Rowling can’t, like introducing him to local literary figures and putting him in local wars. It may be good and it may be bad, but it’s a market failure to prevent it.<\/p>\n

Potter’s publishers, in defense of strong global copyright, would say that works like Tanya Grotter are theft, and such theft destroys the incentive to write in the first place. But the incentives argument is surprisingly unpersuasive in the international setting. To say Rowling will stop writing for fear of international parody is a difficult case to make. Only the most famous and lucrative works are parodied overseas. If an international adaptation is a sign you’ve made it rich, how can it be a serious financial deterrent for new writers?<\/p><\/div>\n

I’d prefer to be both less and more extreme than the Slate<\/i> writer. On the one hand, I do think that all publishers of derivative works should be required to pay a small portion of profits (say, 1%) to the original creator; creators deserve to profit from their creations, including their indirect creations. This idea (usually applied to medicines) is called “compulsory licensing”; the creator has a right to profit from her creation, but not to prevent other producers from using her creation.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, I do think Rowling has the right to control the use of her own name. So although I’d like any publisher to be able to produce a “Harry Potter” book, I don’t think they should be able to print Rowling’s name on the cover or advertising without her express permission (which she presumably wouldn’t give, or would give only in exchange for suitable compensation). “Half the Sins of Mankind” worries that “people who buy the Chinese book in the mistaken belief that it is a new addition to the series have been defrauded,” but we could avoid this by letting Rowling have an exclusive right to put “written by J.K. Rowling” on the cover.<\/p>\n

In exchange for this, society gets the benefit of dozens – perhaps hundreds – of Potter and Potter-derived novels.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, why limit the Potter bounty to folks abroad? Why should writers in China and Russia be free to write (and profit from) Harry Potter<\/i> sequels, but not writers in Britain and the USA? It’s not as if derivative works are necessarily more valuable because they’re created abroad; if preventing such works is a market flaw internationally, it must be a market flaw domestically as well.<\/p>\n

UPDATE: Letters from Limbo<\/a> comments on the same article, and pretty much agrees with my views..<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Via Half the Sins of Mankind, this interesting Slate article argues that folks abroad ought to be free to plagiarize Harry Potter as much as they want. But as trade economists will tell you, trade often works when countries imitate … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[91,98],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-free-speech-censorship-copyright-law-etc","category-site-and-admin-stuff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}