[ SECRET POST #6035 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #6305 ⌋

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


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 15 secrets from Secret Submission Post #901.
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)]

Which are copyrightable? There is your answer.

[(Anonymous)]

Let's say that I write a novel about the torrid love affair between Mina Harker and Lucy Westenra from Dracula. I legally have every right to do that and it's copyrightable. So it would be a book by your definition. If a publisher accepted it, it could be a smash hit and I would be renowned as the new hot author. They could make a movie about it and everything. But if a publisher rejected it, I could also post it on AO3 as a properly tagged fanfiction for the novel Dracula and it would be perfectly clear in that context that it was fanfiction. Let's say I wrote a novel-length fic about a romance between Nick and Gatsby in 2020. Would it become a book at the stroke of midnight January 1 2021 when Gatsby entered public domain?

[(Anonymous)]

You know that if your Mina/Lucy novel was PUBLISHED it would be copyrighted, correct? Like, people could not LEGALLY publish fanfiction of your book and profit of it.

[(Anonymous)]

NAYRT

Actually, it's in the grey area (which is why their Mina/Lucy fanfic is fanfiction). Once the characters are in the public domain, they can't be copyrighted again, unless you've changed everything about them so much as to be original (e.g. Twilight).

[(Anonymous)]

The characters wouldn't be in the public domain, but the text itself would be - I mean I'm not a lawyer but I'm pretty sure that's how it works. Brittle Innings, the Michael Bishop novel where Frankenstein's monster is a home run hitting first baseman, is under copyright even though the character of Frankenstein's monster isn't.

But this kind of illustrates the absurdity of trying to determine whether a text is a book or fanfiction based on its copyright status. You can't do it.

[(Anonymous)]

Sure, you can copyright the fact that you put words in a certain order, but the very definition of fanfiction is to write about characters that are not your own. You cannot copyright character that are not your own. Even if those characters fall into the public domain, you cannot copyright them. You can have a kind of copyright on your fanfiction, whereby you can sue if someone else uses the same words in the same order, but you cannot sue someone else for writing Dracula fanfiction. You can't sue someone else for using the exact same characters in the exact same scenario that is written with words in a different order. Because you don't have a full copyright. You have what non-fiction writers have, to protect against plagiarism. You cannot copyright what has fallen into the public domain.

Fanfiction is not a book. Acting like it is puts us all at risk. Stop it.

[(Anonymous)]

I do not think that fanfiction and books are the same, I just think that the distinctions being advanced are clearly wrong and incoherent.

[(Anonymous)]

That's ok. It's a free country and you're allowed to be wrong. Just be careful, because being wrong about the legal status of fanfiction can bring with it severe financial consequences.

Cause fanfiction doesn't have a copyright.

[(Anonymous)]

My position has been clear.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, and we've explained to you why it's wrong. It can be both, you know.