this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2024
552 points (94.7% liked)

News

23406 readers
3321 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

JK Rowling has challenged Scotland's new hate crime law in a series of social media posts - inviting police to arrest her if they believe she has committed an offence.

The Harry Potter author, who lives in Edinburgh, described several transgender women as men, including convicted prisoners, trans activists and other public figures.

She said "freedom of speech and belief" was at an end if accurate description of biological sex was outlawed.

Earlier, Scotland's first minister Humza Yousaf said the new law would deal with a "rising tide of hatred".

The Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021 creates a new crime of "stirring up hatred" relating to age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity or being intersex.

Ms Rowling, who has long been a critic of some trans activism, posted on X on the day the new legislation came into force.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Zehzin@lemmy.world 6 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Can you point me at where to learn about this? Not being snarky, I'm out of the loop.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 6 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_disputes_over_the_Harry_Potter_series

There's a lot of gray area in the whole Young Adult Fantasy Wizard space. Case in point:

In June 2009, the estate of Adrian Jacobs, a children's author who died in 1997, sued Rowling's publishers, Bloomsbury, for £500 million, accusing her of having plagiarised "substantial parts" of his work in writing the novel Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. In a statement, Jacobs's family claimed that a scene in Goblet of Fire was substantially similar to Jacobs's book The Adventures of Willy the Wizard: Livid Land.

Both Willy and Harry are required to work out the exact nature of the main task of the contest which they both achieve in a bathroom assisted by clues from helpers, in order to discover how to rescue human hostages imprisoned by a community of half-human, half-animal fantasy creatures

Is it possible that Rowling (or one of her ghostwriters) lifted passages from another Wizard Adventure novel with a similar theme of deadly puzzle games? Certainly. Is it possible that there's simply some overlap in how a couple of authors with relatively limited creativity can compose a cliche of the genre? Also certainly.

There's not any material evidence to suggest Rowling straight copypasta'd text from a prior copywritten work. But that would be devilishly hard to come by. As it stands, I'm open to the theory that Rowling's writing team cut corners by pulling a bunch of low-circulation published works and mining them for ideas. But I have relatively little confidence in their ability to prove any of it.

[–] RizzRustbolt@lemmy.world 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Also Gaiman's Books of Magic was a huge "influence" on her work.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 4 points 7 months ago

Well, sure. But if we're going to chase after every author who was influenced by Neil Gaiman, we're burning down half the modern fantasy fiction produced in the last 30 years. If we rope in Anne Rice, I think we'll get the other half.