Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
It's not a "crime", but I'm afraid it very likely is a violation of copyright, like it or not. I'm sorry, but that's just the way the law is. When you buy a DVD, all you're buying is the physical object. You're not buying any rights to the story, and you just can't (outside a few "fair use" purposes, such as literary criticism or review) just go around publishing stories derived from it without the explicit permission of the rights holder.
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It is my firm belief that the vast majority of fanfiction, including the kind I encourage my children to write, is not a violation of copyright. That it falls within the boundaries of fair use in the US. I believe it is mostly a form of criticism or review, and a good deal of it is parody. (I believe the fanfic that isn't transformative is obviously so--such as "taking a chapter of Harry Potter and replacing the character names with my friends.")
I'm aware that the UK and other countries have different boundaries for derived works, and I am glad to live in a country that considers parodies and transformative uses fair.
I happily encourage my children to write and publish their fanfic online. In addition to believing that's both legal and ethical, I reject the notion that people should not be sharing stories about their favorite cultural icons, or that the ethics of "I made up a story about Zeus" are any different from "I made up a story about Batman." If those are two categories, it's very unclear which includes "I made up a story about Thor."