[hildea]

Originally Posted by doubleshuffle

You can't be bothered to read what people write in this thread, can you?

Originally Posted by doubleshuffle

Well, you managed to pick out the one example in which the author of the source material is still alive and does have a claim to copyright. Kudos.

But what do you say about my example from several posts ago?

Heh, yes, it's annoying to try to have a discussion with people who don't seem to engage with any arguments, they just repeat their own stance over and over again.


Going back to the first post in this thread:

Originally Posted by pwalker8

It's the idea of derivative works that I find a bit more interesting. One of the little secrets out there is there is already a huge body of derivative works out there based on a wide range of books or series of books. It's called FanFic. For the most part, copyright holders politely don't notice FanFic as long as they are not required to notice it for legal reasons. Quite a few mention in passing that some of the FanFic can be quite good. I've seen a number of authors who mention that they got their start in FanFic. Basically, it seems that the rule of thumb is that as long as you aren't trying to make money at it, or do something the copyright holder considers highly offensive (the idea of Mickey Mouse porn is one of the reasons trotted out to support long lasting copyrights), most authors don't have an issue with it.

I've read some truly excellent fanfic. One of the driving forces is that it allows people who seldom get to seee people like them as heroes to reimagine popular stories with heroes outside the standard white-straight-cis-male norm.
Or just, like several posters have mentioned here, to play around with the source material, experiment with what if's, go into detail where the canon stories go fast-forward, put the spotlight on a minor character, move the characters into an alterntive universe, or give a happy ending to characters who have tragic endings in canon.

I'm not sure what the legal status of fanfic is, and less sure what it should be. It seems to me that allowing not-for-profit derivative/transformative works would be a good thing, although there might be potential pitfalls I don't see.
I don't see the Mickey Mouse porn hypothetical as a problem. As long as it's clearly marked, so people don't stumble across it by accident, what's the harm?


Added:

I went looking for information on the legality of fanfic, and found this one interesting: https://transformativeworks.org/faq/ See especially the two first items under Legal:

Originally Posted by Organization for Transformative Works

Why does the OTW believe that transformative works are legal?

Copyright is intended to protect the creator’s right to profit from her work for a period of time to encourage creative endeavor and the widespread sharing of knowledge. But this does not preclude the right of others to respond to the original work, either with critical commentary, parody, or, we believe, transformative works.

In the United States, copyright is limited by the fair use doctrine. The legal case of Campbell v. Acuff-Rose held that transformative uses receive special consideration in fair use analysis. For those interested in reading in-depth legal analysis, more information can be found on the Fanlore Legal Analysis page.

What exactly is fair use?

Fair use is the right to make some use of copyrighted material without getting permission or paying. It is a basic limit on copyright law that protects free expression. “Fair use” is an American phrase, although all copyright laws have some limits that keep copyright from being private censorship.

Fair use favors uses that (1) are noncommercial and not sold for a profit; (2) are transformative, adding new meaning and messages to the original; (3) are limited, not copying the entirety of the original; and (4) do not substitute for the original work. None of these factors is absolutely necessary for fair use, but they all help, and we believe that fanworks like those in the archive easily qualify as fair uses based on all these factors.