Reuters-Tanya Grotter vs Harry Potter
Harry Potter trounces Tanya Grotter in court
By Otti Thomas
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Boy wizard "Harry Potter" has trounced Russia's "Tanya Grotter" after an appeals court upheld a ban on the Dutch publication of a Russian novel judges said aped J.K. Rowling's best-selling book.
The Amsterdam appeals court said the similarities between Dmitry Yemets' "Tanya Grotter and the Magic Double Bass" and "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" were too close and upheld the view that the book infringed Rowling's copyright.
"The impression left by the Tanya Grotter story is too similar in many essential aspects to be regarded as an independent creation," the court said in a written ruling on Thursday.
Byblos, publisher of the Dutch translation of the Tanya Grotter book, acknowledged the novel was based on Harry Potter, saying it should be considered not as plagiarism but as a "polemic that quotes from Harry Potter".
The court also rejected Byblos' contention that Harry Potter could not be considered a brand name.
Yemets himself had argued that his book was a parody of the Potter novels and said he trusted his readers to be able to tell the difference between Potter and Grotter.
The Harry Potter books, chronicling the adventures of a bespectacled English schoolboy wizard, have stormed best-seller lists worldwide. Media giant Time Warner has turned the books into hit movies grossing more than $1.7 billion.
Meanwhile Tanya Grotter has cast a spell over Russian readers, with over half a million books being sold in Russia.
Rowling and Time Warner won an injunction from the Amsterdam district court in April to block publication of 7,000 copies of a Dutch translation of Yemets' book published by Byblos.
Lawyer Eric Keyzer, representing Rowling, said the ruling could have international consequences.
"We have heard that 22 countries are waiting for this ruling. I don't think there is a publisher who will take the economic risk of going against this ruling," said Keyzer, who also acted for Time Warner and De Harmonie, the Dutch publisher of the Harry Potter books.
Byblos owner Boudewijn Richel told Reuters: "It is a pity. We tried to show the books are different. But this doesn't mean we cannot publish any other of his (Yemets') books."
Yemets, however, was upbeat. "I am optimistic... Sometimes it takes quite a while for a book to reach its readers," he told Reuters.
Copyright Reuters, 2003
Reuters-Heineken to buy BBAG
Heineken to buy Austria’s BBAG for €1.9bn
Otti Thomas and Louis Charbonneau
Global brewer Heineken will acquire Austria's BBAG in a deal worth €1.9-billion, broadening the Dutch firm's foothold in the central European beer market, the companies said on Friday.
Heineken, one of the world's top four brewers with operations in 170 countries, said it would pay €769-million for a 68.7 percent stake in BBAG, Austria's biggest brewing company, whose brands include Zipfer, Goesser and Edelweiss beers, and then make a public bid for the outstanding shares.
The €1.9-billion valuation consists of €1.5-billion cash and the assumption of about €400-million of debt. About €800-million of the purchase price will be paid this year and the remainder in 2004. The purchase will be financed by debt and Heineken chief executive Anthony Ruys told reporters the brewer did not plan to issue shares.
If it succeeds in acquiring BBAG, Heineken, known worldwide by its bright green logo, said its debt interest costs would rise by €100-million on a full-year basis but that the impact of this on 2003 net profit would be neutral.
Analysts said that while the price — 10.2 times BBAG's core profit for last year — was a bit on the high side, it was worth every cent as Heineken was purchasing a large share of the central European beer market. With many of the 13 countries in the region set to join the European Union in the near future, analysts said Heineken was positioning itself to reap the benefits of the economic growth expected to come from their accession to the bloc.
Big expansion at last
"With this acquisition Heineken will become the undisputed leader in central European countries, with a 28 percent market share in a 92 million hectolitres market, which is expected to grow three percent on average in the next five years," Remco van der Meij, analyst at Bank Oyens & van Eeghen said. The news of the takeover confirmed what a source close to the negotiations told Reuters late on Thursday.
While shares in Heineken slipped 2.4 percent, in line with the local AEX bluechip index and the DJ Stoxx Food and Beverage index, shares in takeover targets BBAG and its unit Brau Union surged more than 30 percent. Heineken has a market value of about €12.7-billion and BBAG's market value is about €1-billion.
Analysts had long considered Heineken the favourite to buy BBAG — Oesterreichische Brau-Beteiligungs Aktiengesellschaft — as the Dutch brewer's existing presence in central Europe gave it the most opportunities for synergies of all the bidders.
A number of large brewers including Scottish & Newcastle , SABMiller and Carlsberg were earlier reported to be in the race to buy BBAG. For some time now analysts have urged Heineken, which had 2002 net profit of €795-million, to expand aggressively in order to maintain its standing in the global beer industry.
Recently Heineken acquired a majority stake in Croatian brewer Karlovacka Pivovara but investors had craved something more substantial and were pleased with Friday's news.
"BBAG is a very well positioned company with hidden reserves, a conservative balance sheet, a very decent company and a top pick in the central European region," said Roland Neuwirth, analyst at Deutsche Bank. "You obviously have to pay for this kind of quality." Ruys said Heineken was not interested in bidding for Italian brewer Peroni, which is set to be sold for some €600-million. The Dutch brewer had not been expected to bid due to likely opposition from competition regulators.
Takeover planned
Heineken said in a statement it would first acquire up to 100 percent of major BBAG shareholder GeBAG, which has 68.7 percent of BBAG. The GeBAG offer closes on June 13.
Once the purchase is complete, Heineken will launch a public €124 per share offer for the outstanding shares of BBAG and €127.27 per share to BBAG's unit Brau Union. These bids are expected to be made in the last quarter of this year.
This offer is a 34 percent premium to the value of BBAG shares on April 30 and a premium of 45 percent to Brau Union. Heineken will then combine it and BBAG's activities in the region in a new company under the Brau Union AG name.
"This offers an excellent basis for further growth, the opportunity to realise significant synergies and the creation of shareholder value," Ruys said. "Together with BBAG we create the leading brewer in central Europe."
Heineken said annual cost savings are expected to reach €40-million by 2007.
Credit Suisse First Boston advised Heineken on the deal and JP Morgan advised BBAG.
The new Brau Union AG company will be responsible for all operations in Austria, Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania, Hungary, Serbia-Montenegro, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Slovenia, Macedonia and Albania.
Copyright Reuters, 2003
Reuters-Interview Malcolm McClaren
FEATURE-Malcolm McLaren soaks up karaoke
By Otti Thomas
MAASTRICHT, Netherlands, Oct 18 (Reuters) - "Where are the crates. Don't tell me they didn't deliver them or I'm going to kill somebody," shouts Malcolm McLaren to no one in particular. The designer of "anti fashion" and former manager of notorious seventies punk band the Sex Pistols sighs. McLaren doesn't feel like talking because he has to finish an exhibition about himself as a work of art within 24 hours.
"This will take another two weeks," he mutters and then asks his assistant for the Sid Vicious doll. Cursing and swearing he squats on the floor of Maastricht's Bonnefanten Museum and puts the doll beneath a pile of bricks in a coffin containing relics of the punk era: boots, T-shirts and newspaper headlines announcing: "Sid Vicious is dead".
Three hours later, during a tea break, 53-year old McLaren says that after fighting the establishment for more than 30 years, he accepts there's no underground culture anymore.
LIFE HAS BECOME KARAOKE
"Life has become karaoke. Anyone can be a star for 15 minutes. You get up, you sing George Michael, you are George Michael. Everything is mainstream," he says.
Four one-armed-bandits represent the karaoke element of life in McLaren's new art project called "Casino of Authentici and Karaoke." After opening in Maastricht, the exhibition is due to go to Germany, Britain, Japan and France.
By scoring three anarchy symbols on the slot machine, the player "wins" a video fragment about McLaren's life, projected onto a screen.
"You can play with my life, without taking any responsibility for it. That's karaoke," he says. Relics from the past represent the authentic or romantic in life; alongside mementos from the punk era are some of the clothes McLaren designed with his former partner Vivienne Westwood, displayed pressed between glass sheets.
THE ASSASSINS OF FASHION
McLaren's karaoke world is a world without any particular point of view. It differs from the past, when it was possible to live life without fitting into the norm.
"I expected people to live...for adventure. When I designed fashion, I wanted people to wear it as anti-fashion, to be the assassins of fashion. It was for people outside the establishment, with a different kind of behaviour, which maybe was symbolised in the way they wore their clothes," he says.
He took some of his inspiration from Apache Indian culture and pirates, people who went their own way.
"Pirates would beat the living daylights out of a colonel who was colonizing an island for spices on behalf of the British empire - and then take his uniform. That's a funky kind of pirate," McLaren said.
In much the same way the Sex Pistols era, with its chaos and adventure, was funky, he says. "Philosophically speaking, it's very romantic to become an outlaw at age 14, leave school, wear your blazer inside out, write 'chaos' on your armband, steal your mother's safety pins and walk out into the streets. Live life to the full."
POP CULTURE LOSES POWER
But at the end of the century pop culture hasn't got the power it once had, the fashion designer says.
"The new form of dressing, more often than not, is some kind of disguise to look like nothing. You can walk through every country and not worry about passport control. We don't dress up like peacocks anymore and get out on the street to confront everybody at the bus stop. We are immune, used to that." Since the karaoke world is democratic, he says it's fine.
"It's the way we've all decided culture should be. I've come to a point, where I'm trying to understand how the whole culture works and how I can work in it. I'm still a student," he says.
The current exhibition is a first attempt to find his place in the karaoke world, he says.
"That's what an artist does, tries to find a position in the world. The life of an artist is whatever he paints or creates. You try to take the past and ram it right into the future. That's when you change the culture and you move on."
McLaren is part of the Bonnefanten Museum's exhibition on "Taste" which runs to February 13, 2000.
Story: Copyright Reuters, 1999
Photo: Copyright Guardian, 1999
GPD-Haring en Kokosnoot
Haring met Kokosnoot
,,Waarom stopt de bus niet als ik met mijn hand zwaai”, vroeg een Nederlandse vriend, die onlangs gedurende drie weken mijn woning als uitvalsbasis voor zijn vakantie gebruikte. Een blanke vriend, moet ik daar voor de volledigheid aan toevoergen. “Ik weet het niet”, zei ik, “maar ik heb al vaker gehoord dat sommige buschauffeurs niet voor blanke mensen stoppen.” Dat weet ik – een Nederlander met melkchocolade-bruine huid – niet uit ervaring, maar ik heb het van horen zeggen.
Ik heb ook van horen zeggen, of ergens gelezen, dat die gierige Nederlanders zich overal mee willen bemoeien, het altijd beter weten en op hun eigen nuchtere manier ontzettende druktemakers zijn. Misschien heb ik het me zelf wel eens horen zeggen. Antillianen zijn zo relaxed, dat je ze rustig als lui kunt bestempelen, maar ze zijn wel gezellig en altijd te vinden vor een feestje waar ze dan bijzonder swingend kunnen dansen. Ook dit zouden mijn woorden wel eens kunnen zijn. Ik generaliseer, net als vele anderen.
Ik ben al maanden bezig om uit te vinden, hoe dat nu precies zit met de Nederlanders, de Antillianen en de relatie tussen hen. Soms denk ik dat er helemaal geen uitwisseling van culturen is. Je kunt op Curaçao de typische Hollandse huisjes, zoals aan de Handelskade in Willemstad bezichtigen. Daar kun je komen via een lange omweg door de Rembrandtstraat, langs het Wilhelminaplein en over de Julianabrug, terwijl je bij het hotel van Nederlands grootste wegrestaurantketen een broodje haring met uitjes kunt kopen, die de eigenaar misschien wel bij het buitenlandse filliaal van Nederlands bekendste kruidenier heeft gekocht.
En daarna met de bus naar een van de stranden, waar weliswaar palmbomen staan, maar waar je vrijwel geen enkele Antilliaan zal tegenkomen, terwijl je naar nieuwste hit van Borsato luistert. Je kunt ook met de bus naar het westen van het eiland. Langs het dorpje Tera Kora (Rode Aarde), langs Tera Pretu (Zwarte Aarde), kokosnootmelk drinken bij een kraampje aan de kant van de stoffige weg en dan door een veld vol cactussen naar het strand. Een strandje, waar de enige publieke voorziening een prullenbak is en waar de Antilliaanse families en hun buren uitgebreid barbecuen tussen de kleine roeiboten van vissers, die rond 5.00 uur de zee opvaren om met de gevangen vis hun familie van brood voorzien. En’ s avonds naar een groepje muzikanten luisteren, terwijl een viertal grijze mannen luidruchtig domino speelt, rum drinkt en het leven analyseert. En je komt de hele dag geen blanke tegen.
“Bon dia”, wenste mijn vriend in zijn beste Papiaments een buschauffeur die wel stopte, “goede dag.” “Waar kom je vandaan”, vroeg de buschauffeur en keek in zijn achteruitkijkspiegeltje.
“Nederland.”
“Oh, ik ken ook iemand in Nederland. Koud daar, hè?”
“Nogal. Hier is het lekker warm.”
“Te warm.”
Het gesprek viel dood. Mijn vriend zei niet dat het helemaal niet warm vond, maar juist lekker, chauffeur concentreerde zich, absoluut niet swingend, op het verkeer. Misschien hadden ze een slechte dag. Of misschien zijn Antillianen toch niet zo relaxed en gezellig en Nederlanders toch niet drukdoend en betweterig. Maar let wel: dat heeft u ergens gelezen.
Copyright GPD, 1998
