Some clueless nerds are laughing it up because someone self-published their Star Wars fan-fiction on Amazon and is surprised she's violating Copryright.

It always surprises me how many essentially intelligent, honest and well-meaning people can be so subservient to the established order. I understand that making your way in life involves accepting certain norms, but this is ridiculous.

Seriously. Why not be surprised? Star Wars is more than 25 years old. In the pre-Disney era, Copyright expired sooner than that. It's a natural feeling that you should be allowed, at this point, to write a story inspired by the great stories of previous generations -- even one which is explicitly an extension of that story -- and publish it if you want.

Besides, putting aside the letter of the law, do you think George Lucas (or his parent company) has any kind of moral claim to the characters and places he created which have entertained so many? After the way he's whored that epic bitch out? For that matter, why is Michael Jackson living out his days in Bahrain, subsisting of the royalties from Hey Jude? Why? Because we fucked this shit up, man! It's not supposed to be like this.

Publishing your fanfic novel and selling it online is just plain stupid, and publishing your fanfic novel and selling it online when you're theoretically a professional editor is just about as stupid as you can get without actually receiving head trauma from a tauntaun.

Maybe she's from the school of "editors who help people right better," not the "editors who specialize in the byzantine and unnatural world that is information policy."

Look. If she sold it at a neighborhood bookshop it would have been fine and you would never have known. No harm no foul. In fact, I say no harm no foul with her shit available (to the world, egad!) on Amazon. Come on, what's really going to happen? She's gonna sell 50 or 100 copies, mostly paying for postage and printing.

Is this "stupid?" Is it even a problem? Should George Lucas really have the right to control Star Wars 29 years after it was published? Certainly he gets all rights to the actual thing he created, but to all derivative works as well? Does that make fucking sense?

The squares think so; I think because they're trained to do that. They're trained to believe that ideas are a kind of property, like a diamond or a bar of gold, even though this is not the truth. Maybe someday they'll open their minds. I hope they do.