Campbell v. Disney

Crossposted from a comment at snarkoleptics, about the webcomic Power Puff Girls Doujiunshi which is an unauthorized derivative work.

Part of the dynamic going on here is that in Japan fanfiction is encouraged rather than looked down upon as it is here in Western cultures. That's what doujinshi means, manga and anime fanfiction. Property owners print unsolicited doujinshi in fan magazines. The culture honors the cultural significance of copyrighted heroes better than ours does. Though my own, wholly anecdotal, research suggests that even in this country copyright owners are tolerant of fanfiction websites, and only send cease-and-desist orders to websites that present production photos or plot synopses, i.e. actual material owned by the property owner rather than original derivative work. (Or to websites that present parodies the owners really really don't like, as in the Penny Arcade case.)

Once when I was still only drawing daily cartoons at my fanfiction site I came across the Webcomic Cartoonists' Awards site. Now I've been subjected to some thirty years' worth of the second-class status afforded fanfiction creators. (Do people think Homer created the characters in The Iliad? Shakespeare never created a character or a plot in his life.) Correctly or not, I immediately assumed that WCCA organizers and participants would be actively disinterested in my webcomics, that getting involved would only bring me sorrow, that the WCCAs aren't for me. This attitude in me has persisted even now that I'm also running a webcomic derived from public domain matter. If I'd known then that PPGD would one day win WCCAs I might feel differently now.