Sam Cushion and Midnight Sun

[marauderthesn]

Hi, I'm Marauder; I'm a second-year law student and I've been in Harry Potter fandom since 2002. Could somebody do me a huge favor and evaluate this, specifically thisSam Cushion had a twirock band called Midnight Sun; his songs were all electronic and instrumental. He was advertising the albums as "the unofficial scores" to the various books in

Comments

[rubymiene]

Words and short phrases are by definition not copyrightable. Are you sure they're not making a trademark claim?
And of course, they can claim anything in a nasty letter. Unless they send a DMCA takedown or file a suit, there are no consequences at all to making bogus claims, and even if they did, consequences are few and far in between and require a countersuit.
I call BS on their claims so long as he has a really big disclaimer, but he may want to pause selling anything while he finds a good fair use lawyer. I recommend Stanford's Fair Use Clinic.

[auroraceleste]

I'm not a lawyer, but let me tell you a secret about how these things work: he who has the most money wins. Unless the fourteen year olds can come up with enough money to beat Summit Entertainment in court the company will spend serious money trying to bankrupt the individuals they see as doing wrong. Sometimes they even know they are in the wrong while they do this. The reality is that unless the kids find someone to defend them free of charge (and that someone doesn't like paying their rent or feeding their kids while the case is going on) or they find a billionaire sponsor for their case they will be bankrupted out of court before the case is heard.

[rubymiene]

There are several non-profit organizations dedicated to protecting fair use and free speech online, several of whom e_transitions listed below, who would probably be happy to help this guy.
Furthermore, when a corporation knows it's in the wrong, oftentimes an equally strong-worded letter from an attorney will cause the corporation to back off. They won't take a losing case to trial unless the cost of letting something go is bigger than the cost of paying *their* attorneys. One guy making his own rock albums is not a big enough threat to be worth the half a million minimum for Summit to litigate such a weak case.
I think you're being too pessimistic.

[e_transitions]

Your right - that sounds completely wrong, but unfortunately, not that uncommon of a story in fandom. Just another example of the little guy getting picked on by the big corp that knows he doesn't have the resources to fight back. I'd suggest referring him (I'm pretty sure you can't champion this for him since he is the injured party) to an organization such as the following:

http://transformativeworks.org/
http://chillingeffects.org
http://www.eff.org/
http://questioncopyright.org/
http://www.publicknowledge.org/

Call them on it.

[ferret_otaku]

So can the corporation prove they invented the word "twirock" before the musicians used it?

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[anonymous]

You have done a marvelous job by exploring this subject with such an honesty and depth. Thanks for sharing it with us!

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