It seems like crazy logic, but what’s been happening with record companies and their lawyers these days does indeed sound like JK Rowling’s writings. In “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”, Bill Weasley explains to Harry:
“To a goblin, the rightful and true master of any object is the maker, not the purchaser. All goblin-made objects are, in goblin eyes, rightfully theirs,…..They consider our habit of keeping goblin-made objects, passing them from wizard to wizard without further payment, little more than theft.”
In fact, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who is now in a lawsuit with Universal used that very quote, and more from Rowling’s work in their brief. The legal battle, though it involves the sale of promotional music, is actually a worthy one, one which could implicate our personal cd and LP collections – so what we pay for and buy could very well NOT be ours, and we could get sued by the record companies.
“UMG seems to think that the promotional use only label somehow gives it eternal ownership over the CD,” says the EFF.
“While this might make sense to a goblin living in Harry Potter’s world, it’s not the law under the Copyright Act.”
It should be interesting to see what the US courts decide. Hopefully it won’t mean we live in Harry Potter‘s world.
