Fan Games and Fanfiction

That’s the main issue, methinks.

The problem, of course, is that there are people out there who aren’t you.

The MZB incident happened largely because less-than-altruistic intentions were involved and made themselves stick. Opportunists do exist, and I’d like to believe that most authors who take a stand against fanfic (or at least reading such themselves) fundamentally just want to protect themselves after acknowledging this reality.

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The more I research the MZB incident, the more questions I have about the unique circumstances involved … there are so many unique factors to the case and so many unknowns, that it seems the exception.

Of course, those with the most to lose in such cases, would try to advocate the most extreme position.

The key to having a successful fandom working with you is to involve everyone in building as fair and open relationship as possible: your publisher, you and your fans.

The MZB case had so many opaque things happening - multiple ghost writers, some known and others unknown … multiple schemes involving the fan-works and a policy of deceit by the publisher all designed to hide how sick MZB really was and to hide how little MZB was actually involved in her own writing.

I love (as a fan and an aspiring writer) many of those involved in the situation … Mercedes Lackey for example, is one of my heroes, but even she refuses to or can’t come out with everything she knows of the incident.

Mercedes Lackey’s position as of 2009 permits fanfiction to be licensed as derivative fiction under the Creative Commons license … if this principle party to the MZB incident can find ways to support it, then I feel the rest of us should be able to as well.

I honestly do not know how anyone can draw any hard and fast conclusions from this “infamous incident”.

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All works published before 1925 are in the public domain. The reason it’s 1925 is because Disney is still holding on (desperately) to Mickey Mouse.

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Blanket statements like this should be qualified … b/c there are exceptions to the general rule. I read an article within the last year detailing some of those (mostly incidents of copyright being extended through the author’s estate) but I neither recall the details nor the source, so I just urge everyone to do their due diligence on any work they want to write fanfictioon or make fan art about.

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Okay. There are certain works after 1925 that are also in the public domain, but in the United States, anything published before 1925 is public domain.

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While I agree, the conclusions that I personally drew have very little to do with what actually happened and merely limited to what could happen. For many publishers, that may already be more than enough. The possibility of disaster is likely clear enough an incentive to ensure their authors take steps to avoid it.

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OR you could try not terrifying the poor fanfic writers by passing public judgment on them. Fanfic writers have been known to delete or discontinue fics because they were uncomfortable with scrutiny from source material authors. I’ve personally known people who did this, and it had a deleterious effect on the fandom in question. I almost did it myself, more than once. When I give a PSA to authors to not bloody well comment on fanfic of their work, in the nicest terms possible, I’m doing it on behalf of fans like myself.

Fanfic is written for other fans, not for authors. If authors are glad to know that there’s fic of their work, that’s very nice for them, but fanfic is for fans.

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We will agree to disagree. I fear we may be talking across each other, in agreement but focusing on different things within the same topic.

Being pro-active and involved with your fandom does not mean passing public judgement on them.

Supporting those fans that have both the ability and the desire to grow further into an author or game designer does not mean publically critiquing them… although if you contact them privately, and they agree to work with you, the experience of doing so, may change their lives for the better. This applies equally to those critical of your work and those admiring of your work without critique.

It happened to me personally – I’ve worked with some very talented people, learning from them as much as I could and when I got a chance to be published because of that, it was a good thing, not a bad thing.

Eric Flint, to my knowledge has only provided positive support and interaction … and I think that is a great thing to have.

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If you borrow my own universe to your own ends. I have the right to give my opinion. My universe, my characters my right to operate about what people are doing with them. I haven’t to keep a positive anything. It is mine, I am being gentle enough to allow fan fiction.

If someone says No My response would be rude.

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I’m inclined to agree. I can understand feeling anxious at the author actually reading and commenting; I had a similar instance the other day when I reached out to one of my writing idols expecting to just talk to his assistant, only to have her tell me he’d be reaching out himself. It was both exciting and incredibly unnerving, to a point where I briefly regretted saying anything at all (that didn’t last, though). However, it’s the height of absurdity to gate off an author from something that literally wouldn’t exist without them. Being nervous about author attention is understandable, but there’s really only two acceptable options for a fanfic writer in that situation:

  1. Love it (as in, swallow the discomfort and keep going)
  2. Lump it (which in this case would be to flee in terror, never to be heard from again)

There should not be a third option where a unrealistic level of ownership over your fanfic causes you to push out the person responsible, however indirectly, for its creation.

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a third option, could be to make your stuff hidden (Or take them down). But not to kick the writer, when it can be welcomed by others and help them.

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I would lump those in with Lump It in this regard, since they would all involve basically running away from the writer’s attentions, but I would agree that these are at least somewhat less confrontational options.

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yeah, I was thinking about that individual who want to stick around (Not flee) but don’t want X author to read or judge their stuff.

But that person is Grabbing that authors Property. Intellectual Property is as property as the car I own. If someone is driving my car, I will of course, give my opinion about how someone else treated it.

I think that the public that complaints doesn’t consider Intellectual Property as Property.

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fanfics aren’t proprety of the author who made the original story.

If I make a fanfic about your story, you don’t have a say about it.

Unless I put online somewhere, or I try to sell it for money.

THEN you can say ‘‘Hey! Thats based off my work, this is now my proprety!!!’’ .

If you use MY property, of course, I have a say. It’s mine. Another thing is the fact is not practical to go denounce those not commercial usage.

In fact yes, I can go and acquire the property of your fan made stuff via court. Nintendo and Activision have already done that.

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well those are cheapskates.

Unless someone use the material to cause harm to the original author, or try to sell it and benefit. I don’t see any issue with fan work.

You are appropriating the world of someone else. I do fan fic but first ask the author and. make clear that is not mine nor the characters, nor the universe.

And the owner has allright to judge it and erase it. The author is making you a gift, letting you use his material.

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can you see the millions of peoples asking before making?

Yeah, that gonna be fun for the author lol

This simply isn’t true, at least in the United States.

According to current United States copyright, copyright owners have the exclusive right “to prepare derivative works based upon [their] copyrighted work.” A derivative work is any work, including fanfiction, based upon one or more preexisting works. In the case where a copyright owner chooses to exercise his/her exclusive right to prepare derivative works against a work of fanfiction, s/he can sue the fanfiction writer for copyright infringement. To prove infringement, an owner must present evidence establishing that the accused has copied protected elements of the original work. The possible remedies available if infringement can be proven include an order to cease sharing and/or to destroy the work (known as an injunction), or monetary damages.

Source: Legal issues with fanfiction

All authors have exclusive rights to derivative works of their writing, including fanfiction. According to copyright law, they and they alone (currently) have the legal “right” to creating fanfiction of their own work.

They can choose to not exercise that right in allowing fanfiction writers to write fanfiction of their work; but they still retain that right and can exercise it at any time. They very much have a say in it, and fanfiction is still absolutely their “property” in the sense of what they exercise their rights against when it’s based on their original copyrighted material.

So they can sue for infringement at any time, whether or not the fanfiction is online and whether or not it’s making money, so long as they can prove infringement. Whether or not the case goes well for them, however, is a different matter, because the fanfiction in turn can be protected by “fair use,” which is evaluated on a case-by-case basis, and for which there is no solid legal precedent. Fair use includes assessing the purpose of the fanfiction, how transformative it is, how harmful it could be to the original source material or its sales, and etc. Fanfiction cases in court have gone any which way, but if we’re not talking about the outcome of those cases alone, an author technically has the right (in the US) to sue a fanfiction writer at any time, because they have exclusive rights to their property.

Again, that’s not saying that the court will agree with them and then punish the fanfiction writer. But I want to dispel this idea that (in the US, anyway) authors have no say if you make a fanfiction of their work…

If an author explicitly gives fans the go-ahead to make fanfiction of their work, they are saying they are choosing not to exercise their rights to their derivative works at this time, and fans can do whatever they want. If an author says “no, do not do this,” they believe they are exercising an exclusive right that might be taken away if they don’t exercise it; and it’s not just a “oh they say this but I can just ignore it,” it’s a potential opening yourself up to very real legal issues if the author ever chooses to crack down on it (which some have).

I don’t see any issue with fan work, either, and generally think fandoms are a great thing to keep an author’s work alive and in the world. But I want to make sure everyone is aware of an author’s exact legal rights in the US, and what it means when an author like Eric Flint generously “forgoes” his rights for his fans, and what it means when other authors don’t…

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