Warner Bros has, albeit reluctantly, provided Apple with an object lesson in how to address the issue of fan support websites that have no commercial interest in borrowing a company's copyrighted symbols and trade names: license 'em.

According to The Register, it seems that a week or so ago Warner Brothers sent 15-year-old Claire Field a legal letter demanding she hand over her http://www.harrypotterguide.co.uk domain.

However with a bit of "friendly encouragement" from The Register website and The Mirror newspaper, as well as other UK media including the BBC and the Independent . WB has now backed down and decided that Claire's site is actually quite wonderful, that she is a great little fan, and so on. Indeed, with the help of constructive criticism from the media, Warner Brothers has decided it might even give Claire a free licence to become an official Potter site.

This affair recalls several that Apple has been involved in, most notably in recent months their shutting down of Simon Jones' excellent Mac Cards Web site under threat of heavy-duty legal action. Unfortunately, Apple was less receptive to media criticism, some of it from me here at Applelinks. My suggestion that the time was that Apple, instead of beating up one of its most enthusiastic fans, should instead of offer Simon a license, gratis, so long as he was not making any money from expending a lot of effort and creativity promoting Apple products in a tasteful and sophisticated manner, which he had been doing.

I hasten to add here that The Register reports that Warner Brothers also "has a solid history of firing legal letters at people it feels are infringing its trademarks. It more or less wiped out Bablyon 5 unofficial fan sites and since it got its hands on the Harry Potter film has been stamping on domains that simply include the name."

Unfortunately, says The Register, "The shame is that WB withdrawing from this [Claire Fields] case is unlikely to have any effect at all on its future behaviour."

Shame indeed.

But Apple is on a lot thinner ice then Warner Brothers, despite being more arrogant. Apple's general demeanor, and not just on trademark issues, seems to be that consumers are privileged to be able to buy their products, no matter how the company treats them.

It is my considered opinion that Apple's recent market share woes are partly attributable do this attitude. I am a consummate Mac OS fan, and hope to continue using Macintosh computers indefinitely, but I am far less enamored of the corporate personality of the company that makes them.

Charles W. Moore

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