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September 18 – September 25, 2008 Edition Right to Write
Fund to Help
Creative Artists NEW YORK, NY/9/17/2008–The Right to Write Fund, a project of the Center for Ethics in Action, has launched a fund-raising effort to help support creative artists faced with legal intimidation or intellectual property rights issues. The fund helped support Roger Rapoport’s defense against JK Rowling when he tried to publish the Harry Potter Lexicon. In that case, however, the Court ruled in favor of Rowling and recently blocked publication of the Lexicon.
The Fund now acts as a clearing house for legal issues facing authors, such as protecting the author’s rights in today’s complex digital and film environment. The group also will develop an educational repository in the Grand Valley State University Libraries in Allendale and Grand rapids, Michigan. The organization will collect and distribute legal briefs and analyses, and media reports related to copyright, trademark and other intellectual property issues.
Among the groups supporting Right to Write are Stanford University Law School’s Fair Use Project and Harvard Law School’s Citizen Media Law Projects.
The Right to Write Fund, a non-profit organization, is bearing a sign cant expense in the Harry Potter Lexicon case and other cases. The Center for Ethics in Action was created in 1996 to promote a new ethical compass for the country and the world beyond with women leaders setting the course. It is a publicly supported U.S. non-governmental organization with its own tax-exempt status, located at the University of New England’s Portland, Maine campus.
