Paul Gadzikowski

Sometimes in defending fanfiction you come up against someone who doesn't distinguish between fanfiction and plagiarism. Fanfiction is not plagiarism; fanfiction is unauthorized derivative work. There is a difference and I mean legally: Plagiarism and derivative work have different definitions under the law.

• Plagiarism is putting your name on original work created by someone else.
• Derivative work is you creating an original work that is derived from some other original work. If that sourcework falls under copyright, the derivative work may be authorized or unauthorized by the copyright holder. If it's unauthorized, it's fanfiction.*

If you need an example to demonstrate the difference between plagiarism and derivative work, use William Shakespeare.

Shakespeare never invented a plot in his life. His histories were based on sources. His tragedies were based on sources, sometimes historical (e.g., Hamlet). Shakespeare's works were derivative, literally and under the modern legal definition. Allowing for the differences between now and then in intellectual property law, it can be said Shakespeare wrote fanfiction. Shakespeare wrote crossovers! - A Midsummer Night's Dream is a crossover between Greek myth and English fairy lore.

Now, there is or once was a movement in academia that believed Shakespeare's plays were actually written by Francis Bacon. If that were true, then Shakespeare's works would be plagiarism, because he'd have put his name on works that were written by someone else.

Fanfiction isn't plagiarism. A fanfiction writer isn't someone who uploads to his website an MPEG of The Wrath of Khan or the text of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and then claims to have written it himself. A fanfiction author creates original works derived from the works he's saluting. For the record, though, taking someone else's fanfiction and globally replacing - for example - Forever Knight character names with Moonlight character names, and then reposting the work with your own byline, is plagiarism. The sort of thing happens.

* I believe fanfiction is, and of a right ought to be, fair use like parody. However that's beside the present point.
Edit Jan 2010 Also, fanfiction is increasingly being used in the vernacular to describe prose derivative work whether or not the sourcework falls under copyright. If that goes on, soon we'll need another word to mean what fanfiction used to mean...