Why Did Nobody Tell Me?

Recently, there was a ruling that it's okay to resell promo CDs, no matter what's stamped on them. This made blips all over the place, and hooray for music and all that.

What I don't think got covered as much as it should is that the brief for the defense (not the record company) started with a citation to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows:

I. INTRODUCTION
Bill Weasley: To a goblin, the rightful and true master of any object is the maker, not the purchaser. All goblin-made objects are, in goblin eyes, rightfully theirs.
Harry Potter: But if it was bought—
Bill Weasley: —then they would consider it rented by the one who had paid the money. They have, however, great difficulty with the idea of goblin-made objects passing from wizard to wizard. …
They consider our habit of keeping goblin-made objects, passing them from wizard to wizard without further payment, little more than theft.
—J.K. Rowling, HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS 517 (2007).

This case poses a simple question: does the secondhand sale of a music CD bearing a "promotional use only" legend infringe copyright law? Like the goblins in J.K. Rowling’s "Harry Potter" books, plaintiff and counter-defendant UMG Recordings, Inc. ("UMG") maintains that the eternal owner of the object is the maker, rather than the purchaser, at least where these "promo CDs" are concerned. That view, however, is no more the law under the Copyright Act than it is in the fictional world of Harry Potter.

—From Legal Pad

And it's really scary how on point Rowling's writing was for the case.

In other news, the Valley was hot, Get Smart was funny, sushi was tasty, and isako was sonorous.

And if anyone out there happens to have Peeved's remix of RiddleTM's "Ode to Voldemort," would you let me know? It isn't on his Myspace page anymore. Got it.

FriNYTX: 16:45, 2 errors; FriLATX: 10:30; FriSunX: 11:15.