[Rumori] Warner Brothers pulls plug on Wizard People

[Carrie McLaren]

hello, here are a few IP-related stories from my blog this week that 
might interest some of you:



WARNER BROTHERS CANCELS HARRY POTTER SPINOFF

Warner Brothers, which owns the rights to the Harry Potter movies, 
has pulled the plug on screenings of "Wizard People, Dear Reader" 
scheduled to take place here in New York and in Boston this weekend. 
Each theater had rented a print of Harry Potter and the Sorceror's 
Stone, which they had planned to screen with the volume off while 
Brad Neely (who created Wizard People) narrated. But when the powers 
that be at Warner Bros. found out, they called the theaters and made 
them cancel.
http://stayfree.typepad.com/stayfree/2005/03/another_one_bit.html



BILL O'REILLY IS AT IT AGAIN

You'd think Bill O'Reilly and his goons would have learned something 
after the disaster of a lawsuit against Al Franken. But no, the 
company that syndicates O'Reilly's column, is trying to bully a 
weblog into removing links to an O'Reilly column, under the guise of 
copyright violation. That's right: Creators Syndicate has sent a 
cease and desist letter to Newshounds for merely linking to this 
column.

According to Lawrence Lessig, these threats have no basis in the law, 
thanks to a Ticketmaster ruling concluding that Hypertext Linking 
does not violate Copyright.

Inspired by this brouhaha, we were going to suggest that bloggers out 
there to find an O'Reilly column you really, really hate and link to 
it. But apparently Creators Synidicate has been so successful in 
keeping O'Reilly's past columns offline (they're available only to 
paid subscribers from O'Reilly's website) that we can't find many. So 
here's the offending link again. Enjoy.
http://stayfree.typepad.com/stayfree/2005/03/bill_oreilly_is.html


JEFFERSON STARBUCKS

Also worth noting is this parody of Jefferson Starship's "We built 
this city," which Starbucks' upper management performed at a recent 
motivational ceremony. As one reader noted, it's irony that the suits 
feel free to parody others' works but when Keiron Dwyer parodied 
Starbucks logo on his comic book, they sued.
http://stayfree.typepad.com/stayfree/2005/03/jefferson_starb.html

-- 
Carrie McLaren
Editor, Stay F---!
tel: 718 398 9324
www.stayfreemagazine.org
www.illegal-art.org