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Originally Posted by Iphinome
If you failed to notice I've been advocating to anyone who'll listen for a shorter copyright term but even so, if you honestly think fanfic or fan art or fan music or fan sculpture is really a threat to commercial success if sold are you really against giving some legal freedom to the non commercial stuff so they don't need to rely on the good graces of media companies.
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Let me say, by the way, that I too am very much of favour of significantly shorter copyright terms.
The questions you raise are interesting ones, and have no simple answer. Let's consider the case of "Wide Sargasso Sea" in a little more detail. It is, as I'm sure you know, the story of "The Mad Woman in the Attic" from Charlotte Brontė's "Jane Eyre". Generations of readers of Jane Eyre have wanted to know more about her, and "Wide Sargasso Sea" was probably only a success
because of the success of Jane Eyre.
We could ask whether it would have been legitimate for another author to write such a novel in Charlotte Brontė's lifetime. Personally I'd say "no", because it would have removed Brontė's right as an author to tell that story herself, and I think that every author has the right to "control" the characters that they create.
That's the argument against fan fiction: that it removes from the author the right to tell their characters' stories. Does it matter, in reality, if the author has no intention of telling those stories themselves? Probably not, which is why most authors turn a blind eye to it. Should other authors be allowed to tell those stories for commercial gain? I don't know the answer to that.