Fan Fiction and Movie Ratings

NY Times: Please Don’t Call It a G-Rated Dispute: “Recently the [Motion Picture Association of America] sent e-mail messages and letters to people who write online fan fiction, demanding that they stop tagging stories with the ratings. Fan fiction, which uses characters from popular TV shows, movies and novels in original stories, has used movie ratings for years as a way to help adults find stories with mature content and to steer children away from it. Too many children looking for Harry Potter stories were stumbling onto new and unexpected uses for wands.”
An in-progress essay about fan fiction and the law is available from Scrivener’s Error: Warped Weft: Fan Fiction: “‘Fan Fiction’ is fiction written by fans (recalling that the word ‘fan’ is an elision of ‘fanatic’ is not out of place!) and set in the universe of their fanaticism. Some of these stories are mere ‘continuations’ or ‘prequels’ or whatever based very closely indeed upon the object of their desires”