[ SECRET POST #3212 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3212 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 027 secrets from Secret Submission Post #459.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

The venom against Cassandra Clare when she turned pro was not due to the fact that she "filed off the serial numbers" from her own fanfic and published it. The venom was due to the fact she was a plagiarizer and thus should not be rewarded for that.

I have no issue if someone takes a work that is out of copyright and writes something for it, wanting to get published and paid. I have no issue if someone does parody of canon and wants to get published and paid. I have no issue if something is so completely off from canon that "filing off the serial numbers" and publishing as original fiction is possible so the person can be paid. I do, however, have an issue with someone taking someone else's characters and setting and plot set ups to write fanfic and expecting to get paid. The only way to do that legally and morally is to get themselves hired as a tie-in novel writer. It is not their IP, and thus it is not their right to get paid to work with it.

"Fandom teaches writers that they should be amateurs and work for free."
No. It teaches writers that fanfic is for practicing and honing their skills, but if they want to be professional and paid, they need to come up with their own worlds, their own characters, and their own ideas. Which several of them have done.

[sarillia]

So you think the moral standard is the same as the legal standard?

[ketita]

I don't know about anon, but for me personally I see some equivalence between the moral and legal standard in this instance.
Obviously big companies (coughdisneycough) manipulate copyright law so they can make the most money, and to me that's not the spirit in which the law was intended. But by and large, I think the idea of the person who invented this thing which lots of people are enjoying reaping rewards for it, and not letting other people cash in on it (within certain frameworks) is reasonable both legally and morally.

[sarillia]

I think the feelings of the individual creators should get more attention than they do. It doesn't make sense to me to say that it's wrong to do it if the creator doesn't mind.

But to be fair, that's not very common in cases where the fanfic writer is making money off it. I'm more used to these discussions being about the legal, ethical, and artistic problems of writing fanfiction in general. I don't know why but I've been really interested in these arguments for years.

[ketita]

Doesn't the owner of the copyright have to be the one to sue, though? If say you wrote a fanfiction and sold it, the creators always have the option of not suing, though then there's the problem of losing the ability to defend their copyright.
I mean laws generally have to be made so they work for the majority or for some overarching idea.
But I kind of agree with you, I think there are a lot of interesting questions to debate, but for me personally the question of writing a Harry Potter fanfic and selling it outright seems like a pretty clear-cut no. And tbh I don't think fanartists should either.

[sarillia]

If what I've heard from these arguments is true, then it's trademarks that need to be defended and not copyright, but I'm not going to say anything for sure because I'm not an IP lawyer and those are the only people I really want to hear from on this since there are a lot of people who are very confident about facts that they've never spent much time reading (reputable sources) about.

But that's all about the legality of it. All that stuff about suing isn't about the morality of it, which is what I'm more interested in.

[ketita]

Fair point. I am not a lawyer either, so idk.

As for morality, for me personally I don't think there's a question as long as there's no money being made, and I like it better when authors don't tell their fanbases not to create fic. Of course it's their prerogative, but I don't like it. Don't like don't read and all that.

Is there a specific aspect of the ethics question that you find exceptionally interesting?

[sarillia]

Well a lot of the aspects that are particularly interesting to me have nothing to do with the current conversation. Not that that's stopped me so far.

One of the biggest things I can never wrap my head around is people who think it's wrong while the author is alive but okay after they die. If it's stealing while they're alive, then wouldn't it be graverobbing after they die? I also don't really get the people who really equate the law with morality and act like as soon as it's in the public domain, it's not only legally okay but suddenly it's morally okay too when it wasn't before. Is there some reason only known to Disney that the morally correct thing to do is to extend intellectually property rights to, what is it now?, 70 years after the creator's death?

Now I'm just rambling.

[ketita]

I kind of agree with you on that. I think that legally you need to have some kind of limit, because there's this idea that the property needs to be owned by /somebody/, either the creator or their estate. Obviously a lot of that is arbitrary.
From a moral standpoint, maybe it's that while it may be 'graverobbing', you are no longer actually depriving the author of anything, because they're not around to enjoy it themselves anyway.

Humanity has always had types of derivative works and such, and I do think that in the greater scheme of things having a combination of allowing some forms of reinterpretation of stories while still protecting authors' rights is good.

[sarillia]

Ah right, I forgot to put myself in the mindset where fanfiction is depriving the creator of something. It's easy for me to forget since personally I would love to see fanfiction of my own stories. It would be fascinating to see what traits of the characters get exaggerated and who gets turned into a woobie and who gets demonized and everything.

[diet_poison]

I'm not an author, but if I were, I think I'd feel the same way. It'd be super fun. It'd give another dimension of life to my characters, seeing how they're interpreted by other people and what stories they can come up with.

[cbrachyrhynchos]

Trademarks have to be defended. Copyright doesn't have to be.

[diet_poison]

eh, I don't think AYRT implied they were both the same, just in this case they happened to apply to the same thing.

[(Anonymous)]

Look, if you want to stick to copyright laws and all it's fine, but saying first that publishing something based on an out of copyright is something you're ok with and later that "if they want to be professional and paid, they need to come up with their own worlds, their own characters, and their own ideas" it's rather hypocritical.

[mimi-sardinia.livejournal.com]

Then a writer has to come up with a twist on out-of-copyright works that they can call their own. If they have that, they can defend it as their own.

[(Anonymous)]

(ayrt)

The point here is just that the other anon is using a legal difference (whether out of copyright or not) to support a moral objection (writers shouldn't get paid unless they create everything), which contradicts their exception.