Yep. Zactly. And you are, as usual, way ahead of me on knowing this stuff and thinking through the implications.
Although I honestly have an issue with the idea that the entire freaking world can use the Lexicon if it's free and there's zero infringement or cutting into profits... but a printed, much smaller, far less widely circulated version is somehow suddenly a danger. Actually, I know I'm in a minority position on the entire "it's ok if we don't earn anything" definition of fandom. First, because if some of these laws are about *use* and *availability* - why is money a criterion? If added in, as with Fair Use, it's apples and oranges. But yeah, U.S. legal system. And media law. No wonder a judge must make the call, and tries hard to get them to settle first. There *is* no ruling principle.
I also don't like the idea that transformative work must be done for free because it implies that this work has no value, and those who do it don't either. As someone in a brilliant meta somewhere last year said, Is this more of the old line that "women's work" should be given for free, and fandom women are *happy* that way?
A lot of the anti-SVA rants seem to be taking that logic: How dare you make money! It's not true (pure? virginal?) fandom if you seek money in exchange for services to literally *millions* of other fans. (But ok to be a billionaire? Srsly classist attitude.)
Is there even also a bit of fannish entitlement in there? "How dare you not give give give to us greedy greedy ones?" Because I looked at the Lexicon and damn. Iz. Much. Work. For years now that site's been as much a freaking philanthropy for fandom as a collaborative effort and one major nerd's labor of love. (Ex-trekkie librarian - hahahah! So not surprising.)
Heeeyyy now. There's the solution that should have occurred to JKR. Since fans desperately need an index/ guide/ lexicon (hello, millions of users + author too = essential function!)... And this one's been around for years now... And as Tolkien, bible, Hollywood/Diana celebrity books show, there is *no* limit to the number of reference companions the market will bear for a popular figure/show/literary work ... AND as the world's next-to-richest woman is so terribly big into philanthropy (and OMG she needs *huuuge* charitable deductions with that income!) ... why ever didn't she simply set up HP "research centre" non-profits and fund them with boards (which yeah, she'd hold all the positions on, micromanager that she is, but still) that would hire these trufanatical fans to be, basically, the priests and priestesses of the Holy Global Cult of Harry?
Instead we have 298o346,020 fans insisting we don't need no reference works. WFT? Do these people have jobs? And in school, do they actually write papers and do research, or simply download paragraphs from Wikipedia? Reference books, that rearrange existing materials in new and useful ways (visual thesaurus! topical thesaurus! wikipedia/wikiquotes/wiki-etc.) are more needed than ever before in this age where even "children's books" can be the size of small city phone directories *cough*later HP*cough*.
That's if one is a person who uses information.
The comments on WSJ law blog have been particularly obtuse in denying that anyone needs a reference work, or claiming that all fans make their own. Or even, that HP fans just "look through the books" every time they have a question. (With 25 million users of the Lexicon anyway. Um yeh, WSJ readers can do that math.)
Teh fandom has been making a very poor public showing of ignorance and capslock crazy over there. On the WSJ. Ouch. Of all the places to help fandom look dumb, young, hysterical, knee-jerk and vicious to its own, that has to be one of the worst. Fox News, The Economist, might be worse places to be batshit-crazy-fandom-females in, but Wall St Journal would be my random pick for "most likely to sneer" at fans, if they'd ever even heard of them. But now... bam! Living, ranting, emo teen-screeching illiterate proof.