This is a blog about the Lord of the Rings franchise, not the Harry Potter one. But I think that J. K. Rowling’s revelation that Albus Dumbledore is gay has implications for all fandoms. After all, one major activity within any fandom of any size is writing fanfiction. One of Rowling’s remarks may provide yet another bit of evidence that fanfiction is fair use rather than a violation of copyrights. Harry Potter is by far the series that has inspired the largest number of fics, but Rings was second during the time when the films were being released.

First, the facts as we so far know them. Last Friday, October 19, at Carnegie Hall, Rowling appeared to do a reading, answer questions from the audience, and sign books. The audience was made up of fans from across the country who had won the opportunity in a sweepstakes.

During the Q&A, a young audience member asked, “Did Dumbledore, who believed in the prevailing power of love, ever fall in love himself?” Rowling replied, “My truthful answer to you … I always thought of Dumbledore as gay.” According to official news reports, after a stunned silence the audience burst into a lengthy ovation. After that she went on to relate briefly how as a young man Dumbledore fell in love with Grindelwald and was devastated when he discovered Grindelwald’s villainy.

Hard as it is to believe, this event was apparently not audio or video recorded by the press or by the sponsors. (Photos accompanying news stories look to me as if they were taken at earlier signings.) A posting on a large Potter fan site, The Leaky Cauldron, contains a lengthy transcript of highlights of the Q&A session.

It is of course impossible to survey all the responses to this in the media. A quick sampling suggests that the main types of response seems to have been delight, annoyance, or outright anger.

Fans who are delighted range from “I knew it all along” to “I’m stunned.” Many of them mention having written fics.

Fans who are annoyed tend to accuse Rowling of either ruining the books for them or cynically timing her announcement to generate more sales of the book.

Those profoundly angered by Rowling’s statement will presumably demand for the books to be pulled from library shelves. Paganism is one thing, but homosexuality?!

Liberal anchorman Keith Olbermann, who hosted the event but had to leave after introducing the author in order to appear on his own show, Countdown, ran a six-minute segment on the event; for the clip, see here, and for a transcript, see here. (At the end of the segment the screen suddenly went to a test pattern. Fox Noise spies taking over the studio?! The end’s not there in the online video either.) Olbermann focused on Rowling’s politically oriented remarks. She said that the entire series is a plea for tolerance and that it is a warning for people not to assume that the establishment is telling them the truth.

This event strikes me as unprecedented. I personally think the revelation of Dumbledore’s gayness and the other political remarks are wonderful, and I hope that they do have the intended effect upon people’s perceptions of the society around them.

I don’t think Rowling was being calculating in any way concerning the sales of the books and licensed products. A fan asked a direct question, and she answered it. As evidence that she had considered Dumbledore gay all along, she told an anecdote about being at a reading of the script for the next Harry Potter movie. The script had Dumbledore reminiscing about a young lady from his past, and Rowling wrote a note, “Dumbledore’s gay.”

Directly after that anecdote, which elicited laughter, Rowling said, “If I’d known it would make you so happy, I would have announced it years ago!”

Setting aside Rowlings’ motives, however, here I’m concerned with one further remark that has been mentioned only briefly and in only some of the main newswire stories. The AP quotes Rowling as laughing and saying, “Oh, my god, the fan fiction.” Taken out of context, that statement is somewhat less interesting than the full response.

According to the Leaky Cauldron transcript, after the Dumbledore answer, Rowling fielded an unrelated question. Another fan then simply thanked her for what she had said about Dumbledore. Rowling said, “You needed something to keep you going for the next 10 years! Oh, my god, the fan fiction now, eh?” This is far from being simply a rueful aside about fans appropriating her work and writing their own fanfiction—as one might assume from the AP quote.

No, Rowling is addressing the fans, and I think the clear implication is that she expects them to use the new revelation for something, and that something is writing fanfiction. The fact that she made the statement in the context of Dumbledore’s outing pretty clearly includes slash (stories involving same-sex romances and/or erotic content) in the general category of fanfiction. Of course, there already is some Dumbledore slash out there in cyberspace, but one can assume there will be more.

Many fans who post their fics on Yahoo! groups, archives, LiveJournals, or wherever fear that they are violating copyright. In a few cases, though not recently, the studios have made rumbling noises in the direction of a few fans. (George Lucas is notorious in this regard.)

In The Frodo Franchise, I have a section on fanfiction and fanart, focusing on Rings-related works, naturally. There I suggest that there is considerable evidence that fan-generated works do not violate copyright. Some of this comes in the form of lawyer Rebecca Tushnet’s well-argued and supported essay on why fanfiction falls within the fair-use doctrine.

Other evidence that I point to is the fact that the studios have begun to encourage fan writers. In 2005, Entertainment Weekly (owned by Time Warner which owns Warner Bros., producer of the Harry Potter movies) ran a Potter fanfiction contest. Last year New Line took a line suggested on a fan site and put it into Snakes on a Plane. When exchanges like these take place, can the studios really turn around and make a case that fanfiction is illegal?

Individual authors have taken various stances toward fans appropriating their characters for fics of their own. Anne Rice has perhaps been the most adamant among bestselling authors to angrily forbid the use of her characters.

Now, however, another bestselling author has done almost the opposite. I don’t think that Rowling went onto the stage last Friday intending to out Dumbledore or to use the resulting controversy to promote the books. Nonetheless, in general she is well aware that the publication of the last Potter book did not end that franchise. She has, in effect, acknowledged that fanfiction is one thing that helps maintain the interest of readers in a book series and its related products.

In my book I suggest that fan creativity is part of the huge amount of unofficial publicity generated by these enthusiasts, free of charge. As studios and authors gradually realize this, the fans, including Ringers, can gain confidence that they won’t be treated as criminals. I personally consider that at this point the possibility of a studio suing over fanfiction is slim to nonexistent. It would probably lose and in the process generate enormous adverse publicity. Unlike freeloading downloaders of music, these fans have already bought the studio’s product, often attending the same film more than once and later acquiring the DVD.

Perhaps Rowling’s statement about fanfiction is not a major step in the establishment of fanfiction as legal. Still, somehow to me it feels like one—a powerful person’s acknowledgement of common practice–and we all know that fanfiction is common practice indeed! Common practice is one test in determining the legality of a phenomenon.

Although Rowling was addressing 2000 cheering Potter fans, she may also have unintentionally been supporting all fandoms.

[Added October 29.  For more on Rowling's outing of Dumbledore and other post-publication revelations, see my entry. "Rowling's Revelations:  who wants to know,"  on Observations on film art and Film Art.]