Quote:
Originally Posted by ekaser
Correct. To further clarify that particular situation, the reason many authors do not want to let fans write and publish stories based upon their characters and 'worlds' is that those same fans can turn around and sue the author in the future if the author writes a story that is in any way similar to stories the fans wrote. (They may not WIN, but they MIGHT, and the author still has to defend against the suit.)
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Anne McCaffrey allows fans to write fiction set in her Pern universe, but insists the stories be copyrighted in her name as well as the author's to defend against just that sort of problem.
For that matter, Joe Straczynski had the Babylon 5 episode "Passing through Gethsemane" written a year before it got produced. the problem was that a fan on a Compuserve message board had posted a story idea close enough to it that Joe felt compelled to track him down and get a signed legal release before producing the script, to avoid potential problems. (And it's why Joe said again and again online "Don't post story ideas! If you do, I have to stop participating here because of liability problems!"
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Dennis