Summary update.

[elwen]

[It's like summary judgment . . . only less, uh, judgmental.]

Since people on my flist have been posting icons lately, I thought I should jump on the boat, too, so I uploaded a batch of them. 8 for my Zaphkiel iconfiend100 claim here, and these 4 other Angel Sanctuary icons:



I was much too amused by the idea of using only images in which the subject was wearing glasses. (The one on the right was made much earlier.) I gave up after I realized that Setsuna also wears glasses while he's in disguise -- I wanted to upload these now now now, and I was out of inspiration for Setchan. :P

In other news, which I picked up through iconfiend100, apparently the U.S. is involved in negotiating a WIPO treaty that would give broadcasters copyright-like rights to things they transmit, even if they have no original right in it. The U.S. is pushing to extend this concept to the internet, which seems to be creating somewhat of a flurry. I can't help but be amused that (arguably) copyright-infringing fanfic-writers are so worried about losing their (arguably) nonexistent rights.

I haven't done more looking into this than poking around and skimming stuff on the EFF page, but it sounds like the extension to internet still only involves webcasting and not text-based publication. I wonder if Stanford's CIS has anything on this, though, and whether I could get involved. Now that I've joined the ELJ and am fairly likely to join STLR, the next step is to figure out what public interest stuff I might do, and whether I actually have time for any.

Comments

[mergle.livejournal.com]

So, my understanding of copyright law re: fanfiction is this. Whatever fanfiction we write, we _do_ hold the copyrights to. This is all fine and dandy as long as it stays on our harddrives, or is only circulated amongst a small group of friends.

Once we start to distribute/publish (ie, post on a public website), things get messy, because that's when the original author's exclusive rights over derivative works and distribution come into conflict with ours. Theirs trumps ours, generally speaking, and so if they want us to cease and desist, then they can say so and legally speaking we probably have to. Just how far their rights trump ours is something that hasn't been tested.

But LJ, or FFnet, and J Random Fanfic Archive are not the original author. And the original author doesn't even hold the copyright over our own writing - it's that their copyright for their work restricts our distribution rights. So it's reasonable to be concerned, if this act/treaty would indeed give FFnet and LJ the copyright of our work. (Not to mention, what happens if we publish on multiple websites?)

[mergle.livejournal.com]

Addendum: What we actually hold the copyright of in our fanfiction is everything knew we've done - our words, new concepts, new characters, new places. It's the canon characters, etc, that we don't hold the copyright to, and _they_ are the reason the original author's copyright trumps the distribution rights we would otherwise have.

This is also not to say that treaty actually would give LJ copyright of our works. I've been talking it over with a friend, and it looks like it doesn't actually change much. We've all already granted LJ permission to redistribute content we post to their servers, by agreeing to their TOS.

[ctrl-a.livejournal.com]

I understand what you're saying, but I think a fic-writer's "copyrights", even in new characters/concepts/situations, are largely symbolic. Assuming the original author would not give us permission to do anything with our fics, our own yes/no is entirely irrelevant. And even authors etc. that are tolerant of fanfic to some degree probably have limits. After all, you can't really just strip out all the infringing content, otherwise why would it be a fic in the first place?

[mergle.livejournal.com]

It's more than symbolic. Copyright holders _can_ grant us distribution permission, for starters. :)

Second, and more importantly... if the original author took a fanfic writer's works, and used their original characters or words, and publishes that, the fanfic writer could sue them for copyright infringement. They most likely wouldn't have a case on the derivative works/distribution rights end of things, but there has been at least one instance where a writer appeared to have ripped off a fanfic in a published novel (thereby making the infringement for profit, which is one of the three prongs considered in copyright infringement cases), and the fanfic writer sued and won.

This is part of why certain authors (Anne McCaffrey, etc) go really ballistic over fanfic - they were part of the same circle as an author who was sucessfully sued for copyright infringement by a fanfic writer, and to my knowledge tend to either believe that she didn't infringe and so was unfairly a victim, or that she has the right to take whatever she wants out of fanfic, since they're running afowl of her distribution rights.

This is also why some authors are essentially forbidden by their agents and publishers from reading fanfic. For example, Tamora Pierce's forum had a subform for fanfic discussion and posting; her publisher permitted that so long as she never read anything in that forum. So she had another person be the admin for that subforum. (Incidently, Diane Duane can't read the HP books for almost the same reason - her series started before HP, but there are enough similarities that she has to be able to swear that any future similarities are not intentionally or unconciously lifted from Rowling's work.)

For all that fanfic writers may not have distribution rights, we still own our words, and it's still plagerism for someone else to claim those as their own.