"fan fiction "......

[Yapyap]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Yes, some (most?) authors/IP owners tend to look the other way but they don't *all* do so. (Has the copyright holder expressed an opinion on fanfic based on their projects?) A point to consider is that the issue goes deeper than just the *legality* of it. Just because an autor doesn't sue doesn't mean they're not annoyed or offended by what is done with/to their creations. It would be a poor reward to (inadventently) return offense for delight, no?

Which is why I and many other fanfic writers check to see if the author has made an actual statement about fanfic, not just consider the lack of any statement as permission. Of course this gets difficult when the author has passed away but the work is not in public domain yet; fortunately for me, the authors whose work I've loved enough to consider writing fic about them are still alive.

So, yes. A lot of authors these days do have a statement about their attitude to fanfiction somewhere either on their official site, FAQ, have talked about it in their blog, etc.

Some say "I'd rather not; I don't feel comfortable with it" - which is their right and people, by and large, respect those wishes.

(Of course there are always some who don't; fanfic exists for both Diana Gabaldon and GRRMartin's books, in spite of both of those authors considering fanfic authors on the same level with child rapists and murderers. But people are people and not everyone either knows about the author's wishes or cares about it.)

Others, though, say - directly - that they don't have a problem with it. Some authors have links to fanfic sites on their own official sites / on the official sites of their series. Some ask people to rec good fanfic to them and then actually read it. (Although most authors do say they'd rather not read any.) Some hold official competitions which ask people to write short stories set in their universe, with their characters.

And as said above, many (traditionally) published authors, especially in the fantasy/science fiction genres, have started out with fanfic. They wrote it, they published it, they know what it means to fans to be able to interact with the source material in that way, too. Some still write fanfic in addition to writing original fiction, although since people have limited time and interests change over time, I think most stop writing fic once they get a contract for an ongoing original series. Those authors tend to be completely fine with fanfic and say so.

I admit that I don't feel comfortable with the idea of people taking their completed fanfic and just doing a find-and-replace on the names and publishing it as original fiction, e.g. Fifty Shades of Grey (and multiple other mainly Twilight fics, I've gathered).

However, that is generally legal - and there really isn't a lot of difference between "being very inspired" by something and writing your own novel based on it, using original names and changing the settings enough from the start, or writing the novel as fanfic first and then changing the names (either before or after having posted it on the Internet as fanfic) afterwards. We know about Fifty Shades of Grey because it was apparently a popular Twilight fic first - how many books don't we know about, though, which may have started out as fanfic? Books that were either written in small fandoms, with very few readers, before undergoing the transformation, or books that were transformed into an original work already pre-publication? Are those morally and legally wrong, too?

I think what it comes down to is the question of "Is being inspired by an existing work wrong?" - clearly, some of it is legally wrong (like publishing work based on a still-under-copyright work with character names and settings intact for profit), while some of it is in a legal grey area and some of it is perfectly legal (being inspired by someone else's work but not letting anyone know about it, changing the names and modifying the settings before publication, or writing and publishing Sherlock Holmes or Jane Austen fanfic). And if it's fanfic in fandoms where the original creators (who have usually been inspired by a lot of other published work before creating their own) are fine with it or even encourage it... I struggle to see how that is morally wrong, to be honest.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Harper Kingsley

I personally believe that fanfiction as done purely for fun and not profit is cool. I don't like the idea of someone trying to sell those stories for money, and most people would never even think to try. Some of the newer kids don't understand the rules, but that's something you get everywhere when a group expands into public interest, and honestly, most of them get slapped down pretty fast as fandom is a largely self-regulating society.

It's not writing fan fiction that's the issue; it's publishing it that is. Of course anyone can write whatever they wish for their own personal pleasure, but when you publish it, that's when copyright law gets involved, and copyright law doesn't care whether or not you're publishing for profit; the infringement is the same either way.

[Belfaborac]

Do you see it as a problem even when the author has expressly said that he or she doesn't mind, or even welcomes it?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Belfaborac

Do you see it as a problem even when the author has expressly said that he or she doesn't mind, or even welcomes it?

If the copyright holder has given their permission, then it's no longer copyright infringement, but I can imagine that leading to all sorts of potential legal tangles.

[Belfaborac]

Right. I was just curious really, given the vehement disgust you expressed earlier.

[Yapyap]

Originally Posted by HarryT

If the copyright holder has given their permission, then it's no longer copyright infringement, but I can imagine that leading to all sorts of potential legal tangles.

But we're still using their characters and settings, not writing our own. So - even if the creator / copyright holder has given his/her permission, or even encourages the fans to write not-for-profit fanfiction - are we still leeches, parasites and bloodsuckers?

[VaporPunk]

I think the most important thing to know about fan-fic is that 99.9% of it sucks donkey teats. Let an obsessed friend do all the hard work of sifting through it for you...

[Belfaborac]

VaporPunk: 'cause life's too short for diplomacy.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Yapyap

But we're still using their characters and settings, not writing our own. So - even if the creator / copyright holder has given his/her permission, or even encourages the fans to write not-for-profit fanfiction - are we still leeches, parasites and bloodsuckers?

I think your time would be better spent writing original fiction rather than using someone else's intellectual property, permission or no.

[Yapyap]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I think your time would be better spent writing original fiction rather than using someone else's intellectual property, permission or no.

I think my time is better spent doing something I enjoy, really.

I don't have the imagination or the desire to write original fiction. I have a day job I'm happy with; I have no ambitions of becoming a "published author" or making money off my scribbles.

If, one day, an original plot, with original characters, should come to my head, then yes, I will give it a go - thanks to writing fanfic, I know that I'm at least able to write a novel-length story with an ongoing plot line. In the meantime, I'm not going to sit and agonise over coming up with an original setting, universe, characters and plot, when it's not what I want to write about. I write & read fanfic because I want to explore that specific universe and those specific characters (and share those explorations with other fans interested in that same universe and characters), not because I want to be An Author.

[spindlegirl]

Originally Posted by Yapyap

I think my time is better spent doing something I enjoy, really.

I don't have the imagination or the desire to write original fiction. I have a day job I'm happy with; I have no ambitions of becoming a "published author" or making money off my scribbles.

Hear Hear!

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Because the fan fiction writer is a leech, a parasite, a blood-sucker, feeding from the creativity of someone else. If somebody wants to be an author, let them create their own worlds, not steal somebody else's.

Every author leeches off the creativity of someone else. The only difference that copyright makes is saying that people are free to leech off someone who lived 200 years ago but not off someone who wrote a book last year.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by HarryT

It's not writing fan fiction that's the issue; it's publishing it that is. Of course anyone can write whatever they wish for their own personal pleasure, but when you publish it, that's when copyright law gets involved, and copyright law doesn't care whether or not you're publishing for profit; the infringement is the same either way.

Copyright law *does* care about whether you're publishing for profit in the US. The purpose/use of the new work, and its impact on the market for the original, are part of the factors weighed in considering whether infringement exists. The fact that even the most *viciously* anti-fanfic authors and corporations have never filed a lawsuit against fanfic--although there have been many C&D orders--implies that a number of lawyers don't think there's actually a case that would hold up in court.

A lot of fanfic qualifies as parody, which isn't a legal defense in many places, but is in the US. "The Star Trek story where Kirk and Spock get married" is an obvious parody, whether or not it's funny... and re-imagining pairings and romance in the source material is a common theme of fanfic. (So common that many people think it's all of fanfic.)

Originally Posted by HarryT

I think your time would be better spent writing original fiction rather than using someone else's intellectual property, permission or no.

Depends on a person's reasons for writing. If your goal is to make money, your time would usually be better spent doing something else entirely. If your goal is to make a career as an author, your time would usually be better spent writing material whose inspirations can't be easily identified. If your goal is to show the virtues and flaws of a book or TV show you enjoy, and share that consideration with other fans, writing original material isn't going to help.

Also, until this point, those of us on the pro-fanfic side of things weren't limiting fanfic to "other people's intellectual property." It doesn't stop being fanfic because it's written about Sherlock Holmes or Shakespeare's works. It's no more or less creative to write about those, than to write about Harry Potter or Star Trek.

Derivative works are common in nonfiction, especially in academia. Taking someone else's book or research report, quoting a few passages from it, and using those as a basis for an essay with a different theme, happens all the time. It's also how many legal briefs are written: here's a quote from something else, and here's how I interpret that in light of this other detail.

A number of fanfics begin with "here's a line or paragraph from the source, and here's my story about [what could happen next/how that could be interpreted/what this really means to the characters]." I don't see how fiction is so different that a practice revered in academia and the legal realm is immoral, illegal, or "a waste of time" when it's fiction.

[spindlegirl]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

Every author leeches off the creativity of someone else. The only difference that copyright makes is saying that people are free to leech off someone who lived 200 years ago but not off someone who wrote a book last year.

Like this person who "leeched" off American Gothic lol



Source: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=183658

where the article about smartphones has that picture as a header.

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by spindlegirl

Like this person who "leeched" off American Gothic lol

Good one.

I was thinking about one episode in Southpark called "The Simpsons Already Did It". One of the characters tries very hard to come up with an original idea but finds that everything has already been done on The Simpsons. At the end of the episode (from the transcripts):

BUTTERS
They did that on the Simpsons! Ha! Treehouse of Horror! Episode 4F02! The Genesis tub. Lisa loses a tooth, and the bacteria on it start to grow, and makes a little society, and they build a statue of her thinking she's God! Ha! Hahaha!

CARTMAN
...So?

KYLE
...Yeah. So?

CARTMAN
Dude, the Simpsons have done everything already. Who cares?

STAN
Yeah, and they've been on the air for like, thirteen years. Of course they've done everything.

MR .GARRISON
Every idea's been done, Butters, even before the Simpsons.

CHEF
Yeah. In fact, that episode was a rip-off of a Twilight Zone episode.

BUTTERS
Really? So I shouldn't care if I come up with an idea, and the Simpsons already did it. It... uh...doesn't... matter.