

Harry Potter & the Methods of Rationality returns with a fundraising twist - nico_h
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/73/Harry_Potter_and_the_Methods_of_Rationality

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HaloZero
He's basically trying to help promote the non-profit he is working at which
makes sense, not for his own monetary gain.

It's the equivalent of Stephen Colbert saying he'll do something silly if
people help raise x amount of money for y charity.

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nohat
The actual fundraising bribe is a 6/5/4/3 day release schedule for
$0/50000/750000/125000 SIAI donation challenge. Not holding chapters hostage
or anything, as I was first afraid of.

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Eliezer
Here at the Singularity Institute, our motto is "Be less evil than Google."

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spicycat
This seems a little dangerous. Does this seem like monetizing fanfiction
containing copyrighted characters in a non-direct way to anyone else?

I do like the story so far, and I'd hate for it to go _poof_ because of legal
issues.

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nico_h
Only the release timeline would change, by a few days, not the writing or the
releasing at all. But I am not a "copyright" lawyer.

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cperciva
Copyright law doesn't care about whether this is "monetizing" or not. He's
infringing simply by using JK Rowling's characters; he's safe only thanks to
JK Rowling saying that she doesn't mind HP fanfiction as long as it's not
obscene and non-commercial.

So the only real question here is: What does JK Rowling think of this?

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aw3c2
She supports fanfiction but it has to be non-commercial. See eg
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3753001.stm>

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cperciva
Sure. My point is, this is all based on her whims, not on any legal
definitions. So "non-commercial" in this context just means whatever JK
Rowling wants it to mean in this context.

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mcherm
Given that it's raising money for a charities, and that the donations only
accelerate the publication rate, I would be surprised to see Rowling object
when she hasn't objected to previous chapters.

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mcherm
Frustrating: I've been trying for 15 minutes now to make a donation. First, I
had to search to find where to make a donation since the announcement didn't
include a link. Then the Google Checkout button did not work. Then causes.com
sat frozen for over 3 minutes the for getting me a message that there was an
unspecified problem with my card. it's a good cause and a great work of
fiction so I'm willing to try 1 more time.

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perlgeek
It seems that fanfiction.net doesn't allow links in the body text of books. I
hope this is the correct link: <http://singinst.org/donate/>

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endtime
I think it's this: <http://singinst.org/2011summerchallenge>

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yuvipanda
I donated, but that's simply because I'm an incredible fan of the work (and
most of his writing) - I figure it's my way of 'supporting' him. Wonder if
this counts as 'monetizing?

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whatrocks
Dedicating my donation to the 'The Stanford Prison Experiment' sequence.

