WHAT WOULD ASLAN DO?
C.S. Lewis The Silver Chair
Once upon a time there was a little boy who loved the Narnia books by C.S. Lewis so much his father had a great idea for a present. He bought the boy a website, with the domain name Narnia.Mobi so he could have his own little world of Narnia. As you'd expect the boy was delighted and began work on his new site. If you look for the site now, you find a generic ISP ad: it's been taken down. Why?
C.S. Lewis' estate sued the father for this infringement of their copyright and wanted to protect the Narnia intellectual property. The boy (named Comrie Saville-Smith) lost the website because the Lewis lawyers argued that the father intended to sell the website's name for advertising. The family argues not, but the UN arbitrator ruled in favor of the Narnia estate.
This brings up an interesting question: if the Scots family or the ISP refuses to obey the ruling, what can the UN agency do? They have no enforcement arm, they have no legal power, they cannot compel action. All they can do is make an argument and stamp their foot.
And certainly it's difficult to defend the proposition that someone should be penalized for what they might have intended to do. The family is appealing the decision to try to keep their son's website. The $140 investment is turning out to be rather expensive.
One wonders what Lewis would think of the whole thing; I suspect he'd have wanted the child to have his website with his blessing.
C.S. Lewis' estate sued the father for this infringement of their copyright and wanted to protect the Narnia intellectual property. The boy (named Comrie Saville-Smith) lost the website because the Lewis lawyers argued that the father intended to sell the website's name for advertising. The family argues not, but the UN arbitrator ruled in favor of the Narnia estate.
This brings up an interesting question: if the Scots family or the ISP refuses to obey the ruling, what can the UN agency do? They have no enforcement arm, they have no legal power, they cannot compel action. All they can do is make an argument and stamp their foot.
And certainly it's difficult to defend the proposition that someone should be penalized for what they might have intended to do. The family is appealing the decision to try to keep their son's website. The $140 investment is turning out to be rather expensive.
One wonders what Lewis would think of the whole thing; I suspect he'd have wanted the child to have his website with his blessing.
posted by Christopher Taylor at 9:45 AM
2 Comments:
One wonders what Lewis would think of the whole thing; I suspect he'd have wanted the child to have his website with his blessing.
I would imagine you are probably correct. But we just don't know. The more interesting question has to do with intellectual property rights. I think it is an interesting juxtaposition that in this posting you seem to be sympathetic to copyright or intellectual property rights infringements, but yet in the posting just above this one, you come down hard on the Chinese for appropriating the intellectual property rights of Disney.
The problem is, having a website with the name "Narnia" isn't copyright violation. The entire case that the Lewis foundation built was that they thought the father was going to use it to make money off of the name.
They never argued that he couldn't have a website with that name. They didn't complain about it. They argued the dad could use it for making money off the Narnia intellectual property, which he had not and said he wasn't going to.
That's not exactly theft, it's presumption of eventual theft, maybe, if someone took action. It's like arresting you for owning a ski mask, because you might use it to rob someone, maybe, some day.
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