Slash Fans Take Note

[rainy_lilac at yahoo.com]

I persoanlly think that WB will be making a major mistake if they 
target slash while leaving the rest of HP fanfic alone. 

I agree: what is the big deal? Porn... Pffft! Such tight-assed 
virgins! I would think that WB's lawyers would have more important 
things to do with there time. It is not like anyone is making money 
off of this. Isn't that a rather important distinction?

A question for the lawyers:

If fanfic writers are explicitly NOT making a profit or seeking to 
commercially exploit WB's trademark, how much damage can these 
lawyers do? Can they really shut down fanfiction? Do they have any 
idea what toothpaste they are squeezing out of the tube by even 
trying? 

Is fanfic the sort of thing that would be protected by the First 
Amendment? How is writing a story about the HP characters different 
from, say, writing an essay expressing ones opinion about them? Or 
debating on HP4GU about whether or not Sirius is gay? Also, can they 
really targety some fanfic but not all?

I am very curious.


--Suzanne





--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "Jennifer Piersol" <jenP_97 at y...> wrote:
> --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., rainy_lilac at y... wrote:
> > 
> > 
> > http://www.msnbc.com/news/621503.asp?cp1=1
> 
> 
> Oh, now this is interesting.
> 
> A couple of comments/questions:
> 
> First.  How in the hell did HP slash get so popular that it's 
making 
> it into news articles?  I'd never heard of ANY kind of slash prior 
to 
> 2 years ago (when I started reading HP and joined HP4GU (on the 
> yahoo clubs list)), so I'm curious as to what events transpired to 
> make it become a topic of conversation at the news desks.  Was one 
of 
> the researchers a fan, showed it to one of her colleagues, who 
didn't 
> like it, and their ongoing arguments sparked an article?  
> 
> Second.  While I'm not a huge fan of slash, I fail to see the HUGE 
> deal that WB seems to be making of it.  Pornography.  Pfft.  
However, 
> I can imagine that JKR could be bothered by it - not by the fact 
that 
> there's (gasp!) homosexuality going on in it, but if they are HER 
> characters, and SHE has determined their 
personalities/traits/sexual 
> orientation, and she has NOT made these characters gay, she could 
> conceivably be offended.  Of course, you could expand that argument 
> (the "But my characters would never do that" argument) to include 
ALL 
> fanfiction.
> 
> Third.  How is this going to affect the fanfiction world in 
general?  
> Okay, I'm mainly concerned about the HP fanfiction world, but if WB 
> decides to really nail it to HP slash writers everywhere, it's 
going 
> to get to the point where someone's going to argue that ALL 
> fanfiction is illegal, and that WB can't "discriminate" against ONE 
> group of writers, simply because their illegal characters are gay.  
> How un-pc is that, anyway? ;)
> 
> Jen (who is only reading 4 fics at the moment and honestly thinks 
> they're the only things keeping her sane until the movie and book 5 
> come out)