We can do a lot of things to resist IP!

This will mean continuing to produce academic scholarship; it will also mean actively pursuing opportunities to circulate our arguments and insights among those in and beyond the legal profession. We may involve ourselves with organizations such as Creative Commons and the Stanford Fair Use Project, for instance, whose work shuttles between law and culture. We may add our voices to pertinent litigation, as in the amicus brief a contingent of media professors filed in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Inc. et al. v. Grokster, Ltd. et al., the landmark peer-to-peer file-sharing case heard before the United States Supreme Court (Liebman, ). Closer to home, we may offer advice to university committees responsible for formulating file sharing and intellectual property policies. It is also worth noting that the National Communication Association lags far behind peer organizations, such as the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, in terms of formulating best practices statements for the use of copyrighted materials in publications and teaching (see Society for Cinema and Media Studies, ; Thompson, ). Should we really defer the matter of how to use popular artifacts in scholarly contexts to the likes of Scholastic and Warner Bros.?

In Harry Potter's world, the wizarding public lives in fear of mentioning the evil Lord Voldemort's name. It is cursed, they believe, and uttering it will hasten the loathsome sorcerer's return to power. In our world, many feel compelled to tread lightly around words and images associated with the name, Harry Potter. It too is cursed, in a way, owing to the strange incantations of intellectual property law and the power it has conferred on the boy wizard's rights holders. Try as we might to convince ourselves otherwise, we Muggles truly are a magical people after all.