"It's better to ask forgiveness than permission", III

[scarfman]

Diana Gabaldon is an author whose name I've read many times. The second time someone on my flist linked to her recent blogpost complaining about fanfiction [edit 5/9/10 the blogpost and all comments have been deleted] [edit 8/23/14 her blogposts are reprinted in this discussion of them] after discovering her characters have appeared in a prompt in a Support Stacie auction, I followed it, and ended up commenting there:

"I believe fanfiction of a copyrighted property is and of a right ought to be fair use, like parody, when there is no profit made and no infringement on the holder's market. Now, my fandoms are all screen franchises, and I'm sure it's arguable there's a difference in fanfiction's market effect between your intellectual property and, say, STAR WARS; so with that qualification I agree with you as far as your own works are concerned. But there are strong legal arguments out there, some citing existing case law, that support the no-profit-nor-market-infringement position, and I agree with them too.

"(I also believe fanfiction is inevitable. The modern screen adventure hero is the contemporary equivalent of the fireside oral folklore hero of all human history up till now. The hiccup in normality is not that I treat these characters as if I owned them; the hiccup in normality is that they are owned.)"

Edit Gabaldon followed up with a post admitting that she hadn't realized that fanfiction is written out of love for the characters. I commented there with an edited version of what I wrote here.

Comments

[hergrace.livejournal.com]

I like the way you discuss things, Paul. It's clear and well-reasoned. I'm still just at the beginning of the above commentary and its follow-up comments. Thank goodness for Mad Magazine's argument for fair-use for parody all those years ago.

ps - just to show how far back "fan fic" goes - also think about all those little kids (like me) whose games included play-acting Roy Rogers and Man from UNCLE. Even waaaaaaay before then, kids were making up their own stories using characters from the Radio Shows they enjoyed. There were probably even stories written using those characters and shared with friends. Yes, I think your point about oral story-telling is particularly well made.

[hergrace.livejournal.com]

as I follow-up I notice that the Support Stacie site has not updated since February of last year. And yet this fan-fic brouhaha has just recently come up. Most interesting. Is Stacie still a going concern? Is the auction for the fan-fic a recent thing? Inquiring minds would like to know.

[scarfman]

I'm certain it's still going. There are those on my flist who announced the latest round, sometime this month I think. Search LJ.

[pedanther]

she hadn't realized that fanfiction is written out of love for the characters


*eyebrow*

What did she think it was written out of, then?

[scarfman]

Unwholesome lust for the characters, apparently, from the analogies she drew, which offended every fanfiction consumer or producer who saw them before she deleted her blogposts.