Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
The area in which we disagree, WritePR, is that of asking permission. I totally accept that fan fiction is harmless in the majority of cases, but it seems very wrong to me not to ask the permission of the right-holder. It's like, say, trespass. I'm probably not doing any harm if I walk across your land, but you probably wouldn't like me to do so without asking you for permission to do so in advance.
|
I am only familiar with fanfic written about TV shows, but if someone approached the producers, writers, directors (whoever you would talk to about such things) about getting permission to write fanfic, the people in charge would run away screaming. In the world of TV fanfic the writers write their fanfic (and the one cardinal rule is to never charge for it--and secondly to not bring it to the attention of TPTB). And the vast majority of the time TPTB officially say nothing about fanfic, but secretly (and sometimes not so secretly) are excited about it because they know the fans who write fanfic are the kind of fans who buy the DVD's, buy anything connected to their show, go to Comic Con (or whatever con they can find) and generally spend way more money than most people on their show. You can also find shows that have acknowledged fanfic (I watch Supernatural, and boy have they acknowledged fanfic!)
So basically, everyone operates under the polite fiction that nothing is really going on and the writers keep writing and TPTB keep on looking the other way. So actually asking permission doesn't happen.
Mary