Copyright Law and Fandom

[shadowkat]

My public service to the people on my flist who are involved in the creation of fan websites and want to potentially publish the material from those websites in book form.

Apparently JKR is suing someone who has decided to publish the things on his HP website in book form and one of the posters at fandom lawyers has decided to do an in depth legal analysis on the topic.

http://rubymiene.livejournal.com/68538.html

Comments

[darbyunlimited.livejournal.com]

Here's a question from ignorance - is the book being published under US or UK copyright laws?

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Not sure, my guess is US from my brief perusal of the article.

But...the US copyright law was updated in the 1990s and early 2000 to meet the standards of UK and Euro copyright law. Prior to that our standard was weaker than theirs, if I remember correctly. We allowed intellectual property to drop into public domain a lot quicker. One of the many reasons Congress passed the somewhat controversial Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act. So now our standards are pretty much the same with a few minor differences.