As my friend lunas_ceiling put it, this has been the

                        "Week of Wu." 

                                         

Just for the record, let's remind ourselves of who he is. 

He does NOT work with the Stanford Fair Use Project attorneys who are representing RDR books in the Lexicon lawsuit.

Tim Wu is a Columbia Law Professor and writer. Last week he led part of a panel discussion in New York called "OnCopyright 2008." That is his field of interest, and yes, he has strong opinions. Everyone should already know that because he wrote an Article for Slate in January entitled "J.K. Rowling's Dark Mark: Why she should lose her copyright lawsuit against the Harry Potter Lexicon." That's a very simple, straight-forward title. So it shouldn't be a secret that he has an opinion about this case.

However, when he wrote the short vignette in the New Yorker entitled Fan Feud , it caused quite a stir, as my readers know (see the past few entries for details). He also wrote a follow-up on his blog What's New With Wu in which he restated his view.

Some in Fandom feel his article was a cheap shot at people who are already upset. For instance, Sue, one of the regulars on Leaky Cauldron's Pottercast who was actually quoted in Wu's now famous vignette has now blogged about her feelings: The Elephant in the Room.




An alternate view to that is a comment written on Kristin Devoe's Blog "The Daily Prophet" in reference to the New Yorker story. Karen Brown author of the book Prejudice in Harry Potter's World wrote her own opinion of the Leaky Lounge, deleted posts, sympathy for Steve Vander Ark, and the so-called impartiality of fandom.  I think she speaks for many of us who are still Harry Potter fans, and who are not personally involved, but still have a right to our alternative opinions. 

( Calling a Spade a Spade )

Tonight an interesting encounter on Leaky in which Melissa accused the poster kbnthomas of being Karen Brown, and demanded a retraction of the comment posted above.  About the deletions - many people who support Steve Vander Ark have been deleted on Leaky.  I don't see how we can "prove" that now, since the posts are, by definiton, gone.  If Melissa wants to open up her logs for a day and let us see the names of the people deleted in the past three months, that might convince me, so I would urge her to "prove" that we haven't been deleted.