An artist is stripping JK Rowling's name off Harry Potter books and reselling them to fans who oppose the author's vocal anti-trans rhetoric. A legal expert says it's not copyright infringement.

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[–]Voater 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I get that you can buy and sell used books, but the part I don't get is this: You can have a business selling book covers. You can even add your custom artwork to them. You cannot however put copyrighted content on those book covers, such as "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" without permission. So how is it not infringement to replace the original covers with your custom book covers and sell them at a premium? It doesn't seem to meet the fair use standards.

[–]Alienhunter糞大名 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Legally you are probably right. In a strict sense. But this is probably an area where you'd argue that the text is more of a label than anything under fair use in the same sense I can sell you my review of the book and mention the title as many times as I want. Will that hold up in court? Dunno, I very much doubt anyone cares to challenge it since this sort of thing basically doesn't hurt anyone's profit margins. Unless they are going around competing directly with a hardcorver release or something.