HP Fandom is wanking for a change

[teyla]

So, you all probably know HP Lexicon. Looks like the owner/maintainer/whatever, one Steve Vander Ark, has gotten it into his head that he wants to release the site as an encyclopedia in book form. Naturally, JKR doesn't like the idea, and there's lots of bitching and snarking and issuing lawsuits (for a much longer and more detailed explanation, click here to get to praetorianguard's journal.).

This book in question would:
- not be given away for free, meaning it would cost money and bring the publisher profit.
- not contain any new content; it's only a rearrangement of content copyrighted to JKR and whoever she sold the rights to.

All this I found via this f_w entry.

So, my question: why the hell is this even being discussed? I mean, I'd always figured there was a reason we put disclaimers in the headers of our fic. Only borrowing the characters, making no profit, please don't sue. And there's even additional content in a fanfic story. Hell, some HP fanfiction has almost nothing to do with the original anymore. Still, nobody would go and try and publish their fanfic commercially, would they? So why is HP fandom wailing and calling JKR an evil bitch for her not wanting some stranger to make profit from publishing a book filled with ideas she came up with?

Fandom. Sometimes it really puzzles me.

Comments

[teyla]

Lol, yeah, not trying to change the HP fandom. Trying that would be like trying to stand in the way of - oh, I don't know. The Enterprise D at warp 11? Something like that. Lol.

It's just so puzzling. I mean, HP writers do put disclaimers on their fic, too, don't they? How hard is the mental leap from that to understanding that what Steve Vander Ark is doing is completely against copyright law? *shakes head*