Peg Kerr's Journal

It sure looks to me like this is far from cut-and-dried. There's plenty of precedent for encyclopedias, lexicons, etc. The "dangerous precedent" one commenter speaks of was set long ago. If anything, I see the possibility of a dangerous precedent being set where an author with a lot of money and legal power can shut down a project she doesn't like whether it's fair use or not. (Whether the guy acted like a dick ought to be irrelevant legally.)