Reader rights (was Authorial Responsibilities)

[David <dfrankiswork@netscape.net>]

Elkins (that's *the* Elkins, children) wrote:

> In an open marketplace like the fanfic community, what precisely
> *are* reader rights, do you think?
> 
> I'm not trying to dismiss the entire idea, you understand.  I'm 
> just trying to get a handle on what you think that they are.
> 
To be honest, where fiction is concerned, I don't know.  I have 
observed the following assertions of rights:

in connection with JKR, that we the readers have a right to expect 
her to get on and finish the next book because 'it is the fans who 
have made her what she is'.  I do not support this view;

in connection with fanfic, the right to be able to judge it truly by 
its cover (NC-17, slash, and so forth).  I'm not sure what I think 
about this. (Leaving aside the question of the protection of 
children)   Certainly I feel with anything I *buy* I have some sort 
of right to expect what is in the package to correspond with the 
label.  That said, book covers are actually *proverbially* not a 
good guide.  For fanfic, although I am essentially a non-reader I 
think it seems in the interests of both authors and readers that the 
latter can rapidly identify instances of the types of fanfic they 
would like to read.  But rights?  I dunno;

in connection with HPFGU posts, a host of things.  The right not to 
have one's possibly expensive bandwidth cluttered by overlong 
quoting.  The right to read only good spelling and grammar.  The 
right to know what is FF:, TBAY:, etc.  The right to be free from 
the attentions of trolls, flamers, etc.  And so on.  I'm not going 
to comment on list policy issues, but I think it true that many of 
the rules we have can be seen as a result of compromise between 
reader rights ('I don't want to have to be subjected to that!') and 
poster rights ('This is a free country!  I can say what I like!'), 
and the resolution of policy issues a matter of finding the balance.

I only introduced the topic because I thought it was implied in the 
assertion:

> I actually think it rather cheeky for readers to try to dictate 
the content or direction of an author's work 

an assertion I agree with but thought wasn't really answering the 
original question about responsibilities.

A bit finicky of me really, but I thought I'd backtrack to a Nimbus-
type discussion question to which what you said might be a part of 
an answer.

David