Anne Rice. I don't know whether to LOL or just be really pissed.

[reading_is_in]

As some of you know, I'm embroiled in a dissertation on the dire state of copyright law. Research on this topic often sends me into emotional states ranging from righteous anger to outright laughter to the intense desire to hit my head on a wall repeatedly. Some of you may remember back in 2000, US author Anne Rice issued an edict against fan fiction, claiming absolute property in all her characters and forbidding anyone from playing with them on pain of bad things. Personally I don't, and never have had, any desire to do anything with Rice's characters, but the tone in which she presented this as legal 'fact' annoyed the hell out of me - whether one *can* own a character is a decidedly grey point of law with arguments on both sides, and I can think of at least one respected legal scholar (Rosemary J. Coombe) who states that characters are not subject to copyright. (Stanford Law Review 48, quoted in Keith Aoki's excellent article, “(Intellectual) Property and Sovereignty: Notes Toward a Cultural Geography of Authorship,” Rice reminded me of a child throwing a temper tantrum. Just because you really, really, really say so, dear, doesn't make it any more true.
Today I discovered that in 2005, Rice produced a novel starring Jesus.
I am so, so tempted to search for the fanfiction :D