Stephen King, Joe Bob Briggs, Peter Pan, and Matt Forbeck

Yesterday, I shared a link to Matt Forbeck's, who is a freelance game designer and fantasy author, blog which briefly discussed the copyright issues surrounding Peter Pan. Today Matt has a post that goes into much greater detail on the subject and provides an interesting connection to Stephen King.

One of the most interesting development in the situation, other than the Big Stevo connection, is that even though Disney isn't paying the Ormond Hospital royalties on the Barry prequel, they are contractually bound to give them royalties if they make a movie based on said prequel. That gives a hint at how messed up the copyright situation is with regards to the Pan. Matt has written a wonderful article combining personal narrative with factual presentation, if you are interested in Pan at all please read it. My only criticism is it's reliance on Wikipedia for information. Wiki is an interesting and possibly awsome resource, but as Penny-Arcade has pointed out not one without vulnerabilities. Overt vandalism is rare, but like Comic Book history Wiki is controlled by those with interest in the topic. What type of interest, pro or con, on a controversial topic does affect Wiki entries, though given enough time a kind of "Wisdom of Crowds" or "Cool and deliberative sense" tends to rule the day. Besides, with geek topics, especially non-controversial ones, Wiki has much joss, almost as much as a Kistler profile on Monitor Duty.

But what does this have to do with Stephen King and Joe Bob Briggs? Well the Rock Bottom Remainders are a band that Dave Barry and Stephen King are both members. And Joe Bob Briggs was recently in a fan film based on a Stephen King short story. In fact, thank to the Joe Bob link I discovered Stephen King's Short movies online. The site has a large catalogue of fan adaptations of Stephen King's stories. It even appears, if you are as concerned about IP rights as I am, that Big Steve knows about the site and supports fan productions, but it isn't made expressly clear. To be honest though, I don't think Joe Bob would do anything to hurt Big Steve.