things like Tolkien's work must have been lexicon-ified while under copyright.
I was curious about this, and from a cursory scroll through Wikipedia, it looks like there haven't been any print lexicons. Online, quite a few encyclopedias, but print has all been (a) journal articles and (b) reader's guides. Of course, in Tolkien's case, it can be kind of hard to develop definitive dictionary-style information without recourse to things like private notebooks, which are under the control of his estate. (Moreso, I mean, than his published letters and canon works.)
Actually, come to think, I read an interesting essay a couple years back about Joyce scholars, and how they have to mollycoddle some grand-nephew of James Joyce (invite him to symposia and let him ramble at length; not publish anything embarrassing etc.) or else they can't get permission to quote from Joyce's works in their scholarship. And how it drove them all bananas, but that there wasn't anything they could do about it. (These weren't lexicon efforts, but the quoting issue is the same.)
The Guardian sums it up this way:
So the fundamental principles of the case are likely to determine the outcome. The first of these is whether there is a material distinction as far as copyright is concerned between something that is published on the web and something that is published in print. [...]Dave Hammer, RDR's New York attorney, doesn't believe the law distinguishes between digital and printed copyright.
Which brings us to the second key principle. How much control can authors exert over works that make use of their characters? Rowling's lawyers claim the Lexicon has no creative value and contributes nothing to the readers' understanding of the Harry Potter series. Merely rearranging facts into an alphabetical order does not turn it into a secondary, scholarly reference work.
Doing his best to demolish that argument is Anthony Falzone, a lecturer in law at Stanford Law School who advises on intellectual property. He will be representing RDR for free - the only reason the case has made it to court, as most publishers of RDR's size don't have the money to take on Rowling or Warner Bros. "This is a hugely important case about a third party's right to create a new reference book that is designed to help others better understand the original work," he says. "No one is going to buy, or indeed make sense of, the Lexicon unless they have read the Harry Potter books."
[link]
I believe RDR's "lexicon expert" is supposed to testify at some point, so we may learn more about lexicons through the ages.
Haven't Joyce's relatives tried to keep his sexay letters private? I wonder how Eco fared when he wrote his Joyce essay.
Sure there have
Aha! Add that to the Tolkien research entry on Wikipedia!
ION, 8-year-old boy suspended for sniffing marker
A teacher sent him to the principal when she noticed him smelling the marker and his clothing.
"It smelled good," [Eathan] Harris said. "They told me that's wrong."
Eathan shyly shook his head "no" when a reporter asked if he knew about "huffing."
[Principal Chris] Benisch stands by his decision to suspend Harris, saying it sends a clear message about substance abuse.
"This is really, really, seriously dangerous," Benisch said.
In his letter suspending the child, Benisch wrote that smelling the marker fumes could cause the boy to "become intoxicated."
A toxicologist with the Rocky Mountain Poison Control Center says that claim is nearly impossible.
Of course, we don't know the specifics, such as "how long was he sniffing it?"
Also, good thing they don't use mimeographed paper anymore.
Ah, the real purple prose!
Re: the Lexicon case, the fannish reaction (drop an anvil on RDR's head) has a couple of elements.
1. SVA is going to profit from the work of fans. Bad form!
2. SVA & RDR dicked around with WB and JKR and the court, submitting bullshit filings, didn't even have an IP attorney on the case, failed to provide a copy of the book at a time when they would necessarily have had a book.
3. SVA & RDR are relying on the fact that JKR had approved of the Lexicon when it was online-only, and may in fact be arguing that she waived her opportunity to disapprove of it--this despite the fact that the online Lexicon had a lot of analysis and critical material, none of which appears in the print edition.
What fans fear from that argument is that if SVA & RDR win, other copyright holders will interpret the decision such that they feel obligated to shut down all fan resources on the net in order to protect their interests.
I have to admit I have no sympathy for SVA & RDR: they've behaved unprofessionally in the extreme, with no appreciation for the precedent they could be setting. They're trying to rally the troops with the cry of Fair Use, and while they may indeed be operating legally, their behavior has been such, and the possible outcome so negative for other fans, that I rather want them to lose. Or settle! Settling would be good! No precedent!
...So I guess they don't make fruit-smell markers any more? I mean, they all smelled like petroleum underneath, but it was a very watermelon-y petroleum!
