The Constable on September 9th, 2008
According to an article over at p2pnet, JK Rowling has won her lawsuit against the Harry Potter Lexicon (who’s website appears to be gone?), barring them from publishing their reference as a hardcover book.  The author of the lexicon claimed fair use, which was dismissed by the courts.
Author JK Rowling has won her legal battle in a New York court to get an unofficial Harry Potter encyclopaedia banned from publication,” says the BBC.
“Judge Robert Patterson said in a ruling Ms Rowling, 43, had proven Steven Vander Ark’s Harry Potter Lexicon would cause her irreparable harm as a writer.”
The Constable on August 22nd, 2008
This is probably a bit old, since The Chronicle of Higher Education already reported on this way back in the beginning of July, but it seems like it would be a disservice not to mention it here as well.
As is to be expected with any kind of product that is easily digitized and pricier than most people would like, one of the biggest new things being traded online is textbooks. As such, sites like Textbook Torrents are starting to pop up focused on the area, hoping this focus will help spur more availability of the books (they claim to currently have over 5,000 fully scanned textbooks).
Of course, the copyright holders and publishers of these products are less than happy with this and have begun a concerted legal effort to thwart the sharing of such files. Their response: the Association of American Publishers has hired an outside legal firm to send takedown notices to sites hosting the illegal content (although I’m not quite sure how this is going to do them any good in the p2p realm).
One thing to note, however, is that unlike the RIAA’s approach, the publishers have yet to focus on the actual individuals downloading the books. Rather, they appear to be placing their focus (for now at least) entirely on the ones actively hosting the files.
As for Textbook Torrents, it appears they have already been forced to move servers once - and they seem to be prepared to do it again. This is the one real problem with take-down notices: all it will do is keep moving the sites from server to server until they decide to move their hosting to somewhere outside the United States or any other territory that will actually take them down.
