Yeah, I’ll bite. So lists of quotes, descriptions of spells and characters, and a timeline or two is transforming . . . what? The order they’re listed in the books? This is disregarding the critical essays that the guy doesn’t have rights to, of course.

RDR and SJA have provided nothing but flailing wankery in this. They won’t show the book, they won’t explain what the book is, they won’t tack “unofficial” onto the title, they won’t respond to justified queries–and then there’s that nasty bit where they keep making comparisons to police states and Hiroshima. After the first few pages at fandom_wank, I found myself wondering how they as an entity managed to nail both proverbial hands to the cross while simultaneously stuffing their feet into their mouth.

Then there’s that problem SWing touched upon, about how if RDR/SVA wins–or even not–it’ll put all the rest of us fandom members even farther under the microscope. Should the authors of the works we squee over worry that we’ll do the same thing as this guy–turn around and try to sell stuff based on their work or set in their bookverses because we’re all butthurt from not being let in on the real encyclopedia? Or should they just C&D us the second we turn up with fansites, fanfics, or fanworks, to save their profits should we decide to turn a profit off of them?

Sure, JKR has money, and this little book probably wouldn’t financially hurt her. I don’t have money. What if I have the same thing happen to me? I love fandom. I think it’s great and a wonderful place to cut your teeth on writing. I don’t want to have to worry about shutting down anything that springs up because some “fan” with an entitlement complex might decide that making a website makes him a partial owner of my work.

My IP professor spoke extensively about the fact that current consensus is that IP laws are too broad and extensive to sustain creativity and healthy competition in the marketplace. I wonder if we’re going to see courts begin to swing the other way now.

The copyright law was enacted, not for the protection of authors and musicians, but to promote progress of science and arts, for the furtherance of knowledge. Disney, through its part in the passage of the Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) of 1998, got the copyright extended beyond the original act and many legal scholars believe that this is hampering the distribution of knowledge. Works that were considered public domain in the past are now no longer public domain and there are many works that are abandoned that cannot be reproduced and the original copyright owners cannot be found nor can their heirs.

The state of the current copyright system is broken and is far too expansive, in my opinion, to the point that it defeats the purpose which is to promote the dissemination of knowledge.

There’s a very interesting article at . . . I can’t remember the place where it talks about the vitality of the Manga/Anime industry is built upon the shoulders of copyright infringement. It shows that narrow copyright enforcement can actually strengthen the original work rather than weaken it.

Added to that the continued refusal by RDR to hand over a copy of the book to JKR/WB for review makes things even more fishy.

If for some reason RDR’s claims of either Fair Use or Abandonment are allowed to stand in court, the fan communities as we all know them online will pretty much cease to exist.

The idea of laches or collateral estoppel might be useful in arguing mitigation of damages but I think the waiver issue is one that a court might not be willing to go down just yet.

Check out this page… Interesting Reading
http://rdrbooks.com/lexicon_info.html