The copyright issues of fan fiction eBooks

[DaleDe]

I think FanFiction is similar to someone writing a novel about the civil war. The environment already exists and the author can tell a story without having to develop the entire world and rules for the environment that surrounds the story. Developing a world or universe is really a different skill from telling a story. Since HP is a series of stories and since there was a great deal of time between the episodes, one form of fan fic was to take the story so far and tell the next part before the real author writes it a year later. It can be a fun read to see how the story might play out from the same point. I have read some really good stores like this. Another form, usually a short story, is to take an event that is only barely mentioned in the original and then expand it with a little imagination. It is the story, not the setting that people read.

Dale

[pshrynk]

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is a brilliant bit of fanfic, telling the story of Hamlet through the eyes of a pair of walk-offs who were used by Shakespeare to advance the plot.

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by pshrynk

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is a brilliant bit of fanfic, telling the story of Hamlet through the eyes of a pair of walk-offs who were used by Shakespeare to advance the plot.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is brilliant no matter WHAT you call it.

and i would say that fan fiction is just an exacerbated form of what has been going on for centuries ; culture feeds off itself. artists of every media have always been nourished and inspired by those who came before them. art (whether painting, writing, music...) is constantly creating something new out of what has already been created, either by expanding on it, reducing it to its fundamental essence, examining a detail of it, responding to it in some way, rejecting it... that is one of the original purposes of the public domain in fact : to allow culture to continue to enrich the ongoing creative process, on a societal level.

[Madam Broshkina]

This is one of my favorite scenes from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.

[zelda_pinwheel]

oh verbal ping pong !! i love that scene !!

(or badminton, or whatever sport that net is for.)

[Madam Broshkina]

First you confuse mouse with rats, now ping pong with badminton, is there any hope left for you.

[pshrynk]

Originally Posted by Madam Broshkina

First you confuse mouse with rats, now ping pong with badminton, is there any hope left for you.

Rats are big and badminton nets are higher than that. Just sayin'.

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by Madam Broshkina

First you confuse mouse with rats, now ping pong with badminton, is there any hope left for you.

i know, it's embarassing.


(in my defense, i have a cold this week. colds make me stupider than usual.

that's my story, anyway.)

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by pshrynk

Rats are big and badminton nets are higher than that. Just sayin'.

i really know nothing about sports (oh, had you noticed ?) and i try to know as little as possible about rodents. i'll leave that to the men.

[Kirok]

I think it's Court Tennis from the indoor context and the era but I'm just guessing.

K

[pshrynk]

And here I was, thinking it was full contact Fizbin.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Fizbin is only full contact on every other Tuesday. Unless it's raining.

[pshrynk]

But, yesterday being Tuesday, the nines counted double.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I accept what you say, but the fundamental question I'd ask is why you feel a need to use someone else's "property" in your fiction at all? If you want to write, then why not write original fiction, rather than setting it in somebody else's "back yard"?

Why perform Shakespeare's plays rather than something new? Why do actors perform any play not written by the team that's performing it? Why does Disney make movies of classic fairy tales, instead of just movies about characters they created?

The desire to build on an existing body of work, and entertain others by referencing material they already know and love, is an important part of human creativity. Sitting around the TV with a group of friends saying, "I wish they'd make an episode where she goes to San Francisco" is the same impulse that drives fanfic.

No disrespect, but you say that you aren't claiming any rights over anyone else's intellectual property, but I'm sure you'd accept that you are, nonetheless, making use of that property without their permission. That seems ethically wrong to me, regardless of any legal aspects of the issue.

Is it unethical to remake Shakespeare, Dickens, or Grimm's Fairy Tales? If you set aside the legal aspects, that's the same as taking characters from a popular novel or TV show and writing new stories about them.

Intellectual "property" is an odd thing. You don't "own" your writing--you own the right to control its use, for a limited period of time. (In the US. I'm aware that other countries have different copyright laws.) In the US, this is to encourage growth in the sciences & arts--because if you don't have the right to control your works, you might not bother to release them.

However, copyright law wasn't designed to be a stranglehold; other people have fair use rights to some of it immediately, and it's supposed to enter the public domain after a reasonable period of time. (That's a rant for another time.) Fair use includes the right to critique it, even very harshly, and the right to make parodies, and the right to transform it--for example, to make a lexicon or encyclopedia, even without permission from the copyright owner.

I believe (and I'm supported by the legal advisors at transformativeworks.org) that fanfiction falls in the "fair use" category: that it's no more "theft" of someone's material than a detailed, considered review, one that discusses character motivations, alternate ending possibilities, and hidden symbolisms.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Why perform Shakespeare's plays rather than something new? Why do actors perform any play not written by the team that's performing it? Why does Disney make movies of classic fairy tales, instead of just movies about characters they created?

That is a completely different scenario. If you perform a Shakespeare play, you are doing just that - performing Shakespeare. You're not writing your own play using Shakespeare's characters (not that Shakespeare "made up" any of the stories for his plays, of course - they are all based on existing sources).

However, copyright law wasn't designed to be a stranglehold; other people have fair use rights to some of it immediately, and it's supposed to enter the public domain after a reasonable period of time. (That's a rant for another time.) Fair use includes the right to critique it, even very harshly, and the right to make parodies, and the right to transform it--for example, to make a lexicon or encyclopedia, even without permission from the copyright owner.

Certainly, I agree with you. But not that the right to create a lexicon or encylopedia only exists if you add a non-trivial amount of creative input yourself, as Mr. Ark recently found out.

I believe (and I'm supported by the legal advisors at transformativeworks.org) that fanfiction falls in the "fair use" category: that it's no more "theft" of someone's material than a detailed, considered review, one that discusses character motivations, alternate ending possibilities, and hidden symbolisms.

I honestly don't see how fan fiction can conceivably be considered "fair use" to be honest with you. It clearly (IMHO) falls into the category of a "derivative work" which is a breach of copyright unless you have the permission of the copyright holder. That's what Mr. Ark was successfully sued for doing - creating a derivative work.

I have looked at "transformativeworks.org" and it's full of "we believe"'s and other such expressions, but they appear unable to quote one single example where a court has backed their "beliefs". Perhaps you could direct me to such a court ruling if I'm mistaken?

Sorry, but I have very mixed feelings about fan fiction. I accept that it's written by genuine fans and that some publishers and authors probably welcome it as free publicity for them, and for keeping their fans happy, but I honestly do believe that its legal status is very, very dubious.