Harry Potter.jpgThe Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, in league with the MPAA, the monster that Jack Valenti built to enforce his letter-coded rating system, has demanded that writers of online fan fiction discontinue the use of said rating system to classify their work. According to a piece in today's New York Times, fan fiction writers began to employ ratings of G, PG, R, etc in order to demarcate stories that planted characters beloved by children into adult situations: "Too many children looking for Harry Potter stories were stumbling onto new and unexpected uses for wands," Pamela Licalzi O'Connell writes.

AMPAS says such use constitutes trademark infringement; The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Wendy Seltzer says this is ridiculous. Using the ratings board this way, she says, is a rough comparison, akin to "saying a beverage tastes like Coke."