Fan Fiction Explained

ContinuousPark writes: "Alternative narratives of Star Wars, Star Trek, X-Files, Buffy, Xena, Starsky and Hutch! Whole seasons never filmed can be read on the Web! The thriving fan-fiction world has been revealed to me in this Slate Magazine article which raises some interesting questions: Who owns the characters? What can be done to them? Who owns the plots if they were posted on some official TV series' Web site? Could I, say, put together a book of these stories, how about a play, a videogame?" The wierdest stuff I've heard is fan fiction writers trying to sue the show when bits of their stories turn up on the show ... I bet someone could write a pretty good generative x-files plot generator to write a few hundred x-files plot synopses, and then just wait until their big chance to score :)

Comments

prior art

[Money__]

The wierdest stuff I've heard is fan fiction writers trying to sue the show when bits of their stories turn up on the show ... I bet someone could write a pretty good generative x-files plot generator to write a few hundred x-files plot synopses, and then just wait until their big chance to score :)

Well, If we see natalie portman pour grits down her pants in "Star Wars Episode II" /. has a case for prior art. ;)

Remember folks, you heard it here on /. first.
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Legalities of FanFic...

[trims]

I've got alot of background dealing with copyright and storyline use, but, IANAL, so consult one if you need official advice.

Fan Fiction fits the definition of "derivative work" in copyright law almost to a T. Despite what the article says, it's pretty clear that all fan fiction (by definition, almost) uses the settings, characters, and plot histories of copyrighted works. I don't care if they go into places that the original never imagined. In fact, that's irrelevant. What is relevant (in the eyes of the courts) is that you are using a well-known character, with defined background and references, that is owned by someone else. Sorry, but that's a derivative work, period. Honestly, I can't see that Fair Use comes into this at all - I think that the studios have a solid claim that "publishing" on the Internet is well beyond the scope of Fair Use, and thus, any protections thereunder are void (the fact that people are making no profit off it is immaterial).

The thing here that studios are afraid of, is that derived works are a two-way street. That is, the new author has to get permission to use the original work in order to publish, but that doesn't mean that the original author owns the new work. What the studios are afraid of in this scenario is that their scriptwriters accidently (or maybe not-so-accidently) use a plot identical to one found in a fanfic story. Oops! Now, the fanfic writer has ownership of that, and you get into some nasty situations.

Basically, I don't have much of a problem with the copyright owners policing their fanfic followers. They are well within their rights to do such, and in fact, it's probably really necessary to protect the integrity of their original works. However, the manner in which some do this is far too heavy-handed, as fanfic is beneficial to the original author. It's a fine line, but, in my opinion, one which the original author has all the right to determine where it should be drawn w/r/t his or her works.

Think of it this way: suppose I write code that I decide to GPL (for whatever reason). Giving fanfic true, unencumbered legal status would be about the same as letting recipients of my GPL code use it in their product, and change the license to something they wanted instead. ( I know this isn't a perfect example, but you're all smart - get the analogy?)

-Erik