In the interest of charity and good-naturedness I'll address your points and explain myself further.

It was clear from the outset you weren't interested in or thinking about "existing law" (because you were claiming to have rights that you don't, under existing law).

It was also pretty clear that you had a pretty strong opinion as to exactly what level of control you'd want to have: I would take the controversial opinion that if somebody's going to make a Sparknotes for a novel I wrote, they need my permission.

I asked you a couple different times why you would want it to be that way -- what's your motivation for wanting the world to be such that, if someone's going to make a Sparknotes for a novel you'd wrote, then they'd need your permission -- and you'd never give a straight answer.

You clarified your position slightly -- some kinds of works referencing yours would be ok (like the bible according to harry potter), but others (like sparknotes) wouldn't -- but never actually explained why you adopted that particular position.

From what you did write I could probably infer your underlying outlook: it's a little hazy, sure, but basically there's some objective sense in which the contents of works by a particular author are or are creative, and when a work is (1) insufficiently creative and (2) heavily dependent on some other, actually-creative work then control of the work is forfeited to the actual creator of the work's underlying content; under such a system authors would have considerably more control over the actions of others than they would in the present system.

If that's not your outlook, no worries: I said I was trying not to put words in your mouth, and that's why I never brought the above up and instead waited for you to explain the connection between your ramblings about relative amounts of creativity and the amount of legal control you wished you had over what other people (hypothetically) did that referenced your (hypothetical) works.

I got more and more exasperated when you failed to explicitly draw the connection: why ought such-and-such notion of creativity ought to be granted legal protection above and beyond what it has now and why not this other kind of creative effort?

And I got more and more exasperated because, on top of all that, you never even answered the question I asked from my very first post: not "why do you think such-and-such amount of control is justified" -- though you never answered that, either -- but "why would you (personally) want such-and-such control?"

I even proffered some hypothetical explanations: maybe you'd "get something" (economic) if you had that level of control; maybe you just wanted it on account of aesthetics or moral code; but, why?

I'd even have been happy with some self-awareness of the "yeah, I just would prefer that level of control, and don't have a strong sense why I want that" sort, but no dice.

So: color me disappointed, and hence the exasperation. I will say that, if I've gotten your outlook approximately correct it's pretty alien to me, as any attempt to establish even a quasi-objective notion of creativity involves making a lot of decisions that themselves will depend upon heavily on unstated assumptions.

For example, elsewhere you describe a (hypothetical) sparknotes for one of your (hypothetical) writings as entirely dependent upon your work, adding nothing and (possibly) taking much away.

That's your opinion; but, like the dude says, "that's just, like, your opinion, man." Here's some of the stuff that that outlook minimizes:

(1) someone writing a sparknotes for your novel is writing it because your novel has become studied sufficiently often for there to be a healthy market for study aides; that your novel has become studied sufficiently often for their to be a healthy market is NOT solely on account of your novel...it's a complicated byproduct of the specific contents of your market, the dynamics of reviewers and academics, the cultural mores of the time, and so forth.

So, already we have a complication: you want to claim that the sparknotes only has value on account of your novel; rather, it has value on account of your novel and the socio-cultural dynamics surrounding your novel, not all of which (to put it mildly) are within your control.

I can understand that you might want to have veto ability over the sparknotes on account of some vague notion that "it's entirely dependent upon my novel for existing", but to go from that being "just your opinion, man" to some kind of enforceable quasi-objective fact means completely discounting the responsibility that the reading and critical audience had upon your works' status; if they hated it, there'd be no sparknotes either.

(2) someone writing a sparknotes can easily claim they're more like the "bible for teens" (the one that has Jesus saying like "be awesome to each other" and "party on, dudes!" when he comes down from the mount): they adapt a particular work (your novel) intended for a particular audience (the general reading public) in a particular context (the general social setting of "literature", or some genre fiction market if that's your call) for another audience (students) in a different context (educational courses).

Your notion of "creative" may not square with what they're doing, but for that difference of opinion to become legally enforceable is essentially equivalent to legally drawing a distinction between some platonic realm (that's where art lives) and the practical world, and granting claims into the platonic realm priority over claims of utility.

It's akin to when the nose-to-the-grindstone geeks claim "twitter's just email lists on the web" -- they're right, but they're right only by ignoring the particularities of the audience and the presentation and the overall framing -- except it'd be codified as law.

(3) there's yet another assumptional axis on which creativity might hinge: the notion of what're ideas that're novel and what aren't have huge unstated underpinnings.

I'll beat up on JK Rowling a bit. For her work to be creative, all of the following ideas must be deemed freely copyable (in the sense of not calling into question the notion of the extent of creativity of the underlying work):

- the notion of crafting a limited-duration children's book series with a coherent plot arc. As long as I've been alive scholastic et al have loved the notion of book series (and for adults there's stuff like fantasy novel series), because by not finishing the entire plot all at once they create an audience eager for sequels. viz, the Prydain books, the Darkness Rising series, literally hundreds more.

- the notion of children with special powers going off to a parallel, hidden world for training in those powers, and eventually going on adventures and so forth, with the development and mastery of those powers -- and their eventual use in matters of significance -- making the book some sort of sublimated bildungsroman. Also old hat; the l'Engle books, possibly Narnia (though that lacks powers it otherwise fits the bill), plenty more.

- the notion of boarding schools with "houses" of distinctive character, etc., which is a mishmash of the boarding school tradition and the oxbrige system

...and I could go on. All of those notions are currently "fair game", sure, but the point is (1) to start ranking things by creativity you have to draw lines between what's fair game and what isn't and (2) there's too many such decisions to ever explicitly make them all and thus (3) any such ranking-by-creativity will have plenty of those "decisions" made implicitly but (4) in your scheme those implicit, never-debated "decisions" would have vastly increased legal heft.

And stuff like the above is why I don't cotton to an outlook in which creativity not only gets somehow "ranked" but in which that ranking takes on a great deal of legal heft (in the form of lawsuits and cease-and-decists and so forth); have all the aesthetic preference you want, plz, but keep them out of my laws if you don't mind sir.

This is my absolutely final participation for a few days; gettin' too heated in these here parts.