Another installment in the never-ending battle between religious nutters and Harry Potter, this time brought to you courtesy of the Iranian News Channel:

The Harry Potter film series reached the cinema following the success of the Zionist propaganda machine which made this little known author and her book famous……It can be viewed as a compilation of secrets and of theories used by the Zionist media…The Zionists support Harry Potter because he is the promised Messiah.

Good lord.

And over here, Al Nickerson inquires of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, whateverthehell happened to that autographed Danish flag. Alas, all his links to my old blog are all gone. Sorry about that.

Oh, one more to add: Iran demands group of actors in Tehran for a nice cultural visit apologize for films such as 300 and the Wrestler for being “insulting to Iranians”. Neither film was shown in Iran.

I sigh.

Personally, I loved all those firm naked abs.

c

Equal opportunity coverage of religious nutters against Harry Potter:

Reading Harry Potter is the highway to hell – hell with a little H because hell with a big H gives Satan more power.

c

I really don’t know that much about Scans Daily. Apparently, it was an online community where people posted reviews, comments, and scans of comic books. I have seen it maybe two or three times (Or five, dunno.)

I’m told it was against the rules to post entire stories, but the couple of times I visited was because someone had posted entire stories of mine and a concerned fan wrote me to inform me of the copyright violation. I chose not to do anything about it because I didn’t want to draw attention to it. As I recall, you could find many of my short stories published in their entirety on that website.

I saw reviews of my works posted there with a few pages scanned to accompany the comments. Fair Use, in my humble opinion. And in at least one case, the poster was conscientious enough to park a link back to my own site. Cool. Others simply do not grant creators even that small courtesy.

I get the impression most of the fans at Scans Daily really didn’t want to do any creators any harm, they just wanted to have a good time. But as always, some people were abusive and didn’t follow the rules or spirit of the rules within the community.

In any case, the community was shut down by Live Journal this weekend and I got a couple of letters from folks asking what I knew about it.

Absolutely nothing.

I haven’t even looked at Scans Daily in I don’t know how long, and didn’t even know about the shut down until folks wrote me about it. And since we haven’t had power or satellite access much of the weekend, I’m a little slow on the news.

Anyway, the most interesting discussion of the matter is over here at Peter David’s website. Some fans have gotten the impression Peter David is personally responsible for shutting down the site, and some have sent threats while others have promised to boycott his work.

Interesting reading for all the wrong reasons.

The comments thread is about as diverse a discussion of the attitudes for and against copyright protections – and the attitudes of the general public toward creators – as I’ve ever seen. (EDIT) I’ve had a chance to do a more thorough read of the comments thread and some of it is downright scary. “It’s just the internet! That’s the way people are!” is not a suitable reaction to threats.

c

The latest round of nanny state legislation finds Congress protecting your children from daily exposure to dangerous chemicals commonly found in items not usually considered dangerous, such as books. Everyone is aTwitter about it, and Laurie Sutton wrote me to let me know about the article in City Journal.

“…under a law Congress passed last year aimed at regulating hazards in children’s products, the federal government has now advised that children’s books published before 1985 should not be considered safe and may in many cases be unlawful to sell or distribute. Merchants, thrift stores, and booksellers may be at risk if they sell older volumes, or even give them away, without first subjecting them to testing—at prohibitive expense. Many used-book sellers, consignment stores, Goodwill outlets, and the like have accordingly begun to refuse new donations of pre-1985 volumes, yank existing ones off their shelves, and in some cases discard them en masse.”

The fine for selling a pre-1985 children’s book to a child or for “children’s use”? $100,000 in fines, and prison. The law covers ANY item sold to children or for children which does not meet draconian testing standards, including handmade crafts and goods.

Can you knit junior a sweater? No, he might eat it and ingest lead. Or something.

Oh my goodness.

Go read and see if you think this law is as dumb as I think it is.

In the meantime, you will throw my first edition of Howard Pyle’s The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood on the junk heap when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers you nanny state bastards.

c

PS: Beware the quarter comic book bin!

In light of the recent legislation banning the sale and distribution of children’s books manufactured prior to 1985 because of fears about lead or something – I thought we’d have a look at some of my loot.

Unless those books have undergone expensive tests for lead, or if you can somehow declare the children’s book a vintage collectible – word is you cannot give any of these books to a child, and you cannot sell them.

But wait! Do we contradict ourselves? Yes, we contradict ourselves:

The new safety law does not require resellers to test children’s products in inventory for compliance with the lead limit before they are sold. However, resellers cannot sell children’s products that exceed the lead limit and therefore should avoid products that are likely to have lead content, unless they have testing or other information to indicate the products being sold have less than the new limit. Those resellers that do sell products in violation of the new limits could face civil and/or criminal penalties.

So, if you think it doesn’t exceed the lead limit, sell at your own risk. Right? And if it turns out my ancient paper exceeds the lead limit of 600 parts per million, if I put it in the hands of some paper-sucking tyke, I could go to jail. Right? But I won’t know unless I have it tested. Right?

Unless I sell it all to an adult as a collectible vintage item. And they can suck all the lead bearing paper they like. Right?

And don’t you think it’s a crying shame they have to post addendums to this dumb law? Because you’d think they’d have thought these things through before they passed it.

But no.

The situation is extremely fluid and every day this week ALA has received new and sometimes contradictory information.

That’s a comfort.

Since none of my kiddy books are worth big sums of money, can they be considered collectible? Where do I get my collectible certification? How can I afford it?

I don’t want to go to book jail!!!

I love my old Andre Norton books. None are particularly valuable. But, now they are illegal if I let my family tykes have them! I could get a $100,000 fine! Holy crap!

It’s like waking up one day and finding out tomatoes are illegal.

So here’s my contraband – I mean – my private collection of highly valuable and collectible goods I would never knowingly place in the hands of a child lest I give them reading cancer. They will be stored in locked cabinets along with the guns, the ammo, and my secret stash of uranium:

All of you out there in cyberland: what’s your book poison? What nefarious ancient volumes make you an outlaw?

My God! The horror! This 1904 copy of Little Sir Galahad by Lillian Holmes only cost me $1 on the secondary market!

Holy Mary Mother of God, won’t someone think of the children?

Any little tyke could afford to buy this tome and suck the ink right off the pages, no doubt giving them a fatal case of reading cancer within days of exposure! Perhaps they will decide the staples in the binding look just like chocolate! And then they could choke to death while trying to lick them!

Of a surety, this book should get the torch.

It is inscribed on the frontspiece, no doubt to make it seem even more harmless to potential buyers. It is a thing of the devil!

“With Best Wishes for a Happy Christmas, to Joel Barren Jr from Cecile Carlyle, Christmas 1916.”

Isn’t that awful? It all looks so…so innocent. And yet, it is obviously such a dangerous item your Congress has decided it should never be given to a child.

Whew. Let’s move along. Here’s a book that cost me $30. I’d say that places it out of the reach of most kids, but since most children’s book cost about $20, maybe not.

It kills me to think this 1943 edition featuring illustrations by N. C. Wyeth is getting tossed in dustbins from flea market to flea market. Mine’s pretty beat up, and it’s not a first edition. Does that render it not collectible? Not vintage?

And how about this beauty? I bought this for 50 cents at a library book sale. Little Timmy and Little Sarah will not have that opportunity now. It’s a good thing because we wouldn’t want to give them reading cancer:

Otto of the Silver Hand by Howard Pyle, with gorgeous thick paper and handsome, clean, black and white illustrations. Destined to give your kiddy something fatal. Like, the ability to understand words like “yclept” and “methinks”.

This is a spectacularly stupid law.

They will get my books when they pry them from my cold dead fingers, those book hating swine Congressmen!

Shame on them! Tsk.

This doesn’t sound promising, though: The Bill passed the House 424-1 and the Senate 89-3.

But then, common sense in an uncommon virtue among that lot.

• The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act goes (went – I pinched this from Publishers Weekly) into effect February 10 and requires third-party testing of all products for children 12 and under, including books, audiobooks and sidelines. This includes older products on-shelf as well as books shipped after the deadline.

• AAP and other industry trade groups are lobbying to have print-on-paper and print-on-board books exempted. They also are looking for clarification on testing protocols and other specifics.

• If the Act stands as currently written and interpreted, significant costs and longer production times will negatively affect publishers and retailers, potentially putting some out of business and causing books to be removed from stores, libraries and schools.

• The industry is struggling to comply with the Act in time for the deadline, even as it waits for resolution and interpretation from the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

For the latest updates and clarifications, go to CPSIA

If you can understand this monster document of legalese blather, you are smarter than me. I saw no exclusion for books, but I did laugh when I got to the paragraph about the Paperwork Reduction Act.

Paperwork.

Reduction.

Act.

Toss a book in a bin, that’ll do it!

.

c