The Boy Who Lived Forever

[blantyr]

Time recently wrote an article on fan fiction, "The Boy Who Lived Forever (http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,2081784,00.html)." It centers on Harry Potter, doesn't deal much with Tolkien, but passes through The Man from UNCLE and Star Trek in covering the history, law and ethics of the art. Should one borrow someone else's characters, even if the author would not approve?

Maybe worth a read.

[LadyBrooke]

Well, legally it's wrong if the author doesn't give permission, but personally authors who act like that annoy me. For the most part, I read fanfic in fandoms where the author is already dead or has given their blessing, so it's not a huge problem (aside from M-E fanfic, I read lots of Sherlock Holmes, Harry Potter, and Shakespeare.) The reason it annoys me is, unless an author somehow manages to avoid any mentions or borrowings from mythology, older works, history, ect. they are writing a form of fanfic. The only difference is the time that has elapsed. Anyone redoing Romeo and Juliet, King Arthur, or a fairy tale is writing fanfic in way. The difference is, those authors can legally make money off it because of the time elapsed.

As mentioned in the article, it has only been in the past couple hundred years that copy right has become important. Nobody made a fuss about Shakespeare rewriting other authors' works for the stage, something that could get you fined if you did it today.

As a writer, if I ever get published, I hope people write fanfiction for it. What better praise could there be then to know that your work spiked the imagination of other people?

[Morthoron]

Well, legally it's wrong if the author doesn't give permission, but personally authors who act like that annoy me. For the most part, I read fanfic in fandoms where the author is already dead or has given their blessing, so it's not a huge problem (aside from M-E fanfic, I read lots of Sherlock Holmes, Harry Potter, and Shakespeare.) The reason it annoys me is, unless an author somehow manages to avoid any mentions or borrowings from mythology, older works, history, ect. they are writing a form of fanfic. The only difference is the time that has elapsed. Anyone redoing Romeo and Juliet, King Arthur, or a fairy tale is writing fanfic in way. The difference is, those authors can legally make money off it because of the time elapsed.

As mentioned in the article, it has only been in the past couple hundred years that copy right has become important. Nobody made a fuss about Shakespeare rewriting other authors' works for the stage, something that could get you fined if you did it today.


I would suggest that Snorri Sturluson, Boccaccio and Chretien de Troyes could sue Tolkien, Chaucer, Malory, Tennyson, T.H. White and and any number of authors and poets for copyright infringement had they not died centuries ago. Likewise, Malory could sue Tennyson and White, Chaucer could sue Shakespeare, etc. Unfortunately, they would all lose their suits because they had, in their turn, lifted material from earlier sources.

The difference lies in the fact that Fan-fiction is not-for-profit creative writing.

No one bats an eye at going to a symphony of Mozart or Bach pieces and shelling out $100 per ticket to enrich the musicians and promoters (the composers being, naturally, beyond all legal recourse), but good lord, try to find a studio version of a Bob Dylan song on YouTube (even though nearly 1/2 off all songs from his first three albums were written by Woody Guthries, Leadbelly or some other folk artist from a previous generation)! But Dylan and his record company expressly forbid such transmission of his material, even in a not-for-profit venue such as YouTube; whereas, The Beatles and Led Zeppelin (who seem to have no difficulty selling millions of CDs a year, even though they have been defunct as groups for 30-40 years), do not have such prohibitions on their music.

[LadyBrooke]

I would suggest that Snorri Sturluson, Boccaccio and Chretien de Troyes could sue Tolkien, Chaucer, Malory, Tennyson, T.H. White and and any number of authors and poets for copyright infringement had they not died centuries ago. Likewise, Malory could sue Tennyson and White, Chaucer could sue Shakespeare, etc. Unfortunately, they would all lose their suits because they had, in their turn, lifted material from earlier sources.

Exactly...there's nothing new under the sun. The only thing that matters is how much new authors can change their starting material.

The difference lies in the fact that Fan-fiction is not-for-profit creative writing.

And of course, the fact that no matter how much authors might complain that it's competing with their book sales, there's very few fanfics that you can read without an idea of the starting material. Try reading a Silm fic, for example, without an undertanding of the Silm. It'd end up like when I was explaing it to my mother - "Wait did you just say he cut off his cousin's hand?!?!"

No one bats an eye at going to a symphony of Mozart or Bach pieces and shelling out $100 per ticket to enrich the musicians and promoters (the composers being, naturally, beyond all legal recourse), but good lord, try to find a studio version of a Bob Dylan song on YouTube (even though nearly 1/2 off all songs from his first three albums were written by Woody Guthries, Leadbelly or some other folk artist from a previous generation)! But Dylan and his record company expressly forbid such transmission of his material, even in a not-for-profit venue such as YouTube; whereas, The Beatles and Led Zeppelin (who seem to have no difficulty selling millions of CDs a year, even though they have been defunct as groups for 30-40 years), do not have such prohibitions on their music.
Exactly - in fact, I'd say I'm more likely to buy a CD or iTunes copy of a song if I've been able to listen to it on Youtube first. Being on a limited budget, if I don't know whether I'm going to like a CD, why in the world would I buy it?

[Galadriel]

Should one borrow someone else's characters, even if the author would not approve?

For one thing, I think any author who hasn't heard of fanfiction has probably been living under a rock. If they have heard of it, and do not wish for their works to enter the scene, they should say so. It's just what George R.R. Martin did. He said he didn't approve of fanfction - and there's really very little of it (based on his works) to speak of.

It's a different case if they haven't heard of it altogether - I would suggest they go and explore the internet a bit more ;)