Talk:Legal issues with fan fiction

Attribution
This article was broken out of the overly long fan fiction article; prior edit history for the content of this article can be found there. bd2412 T 00:42, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks! I knew I wasn't the only person considering a split, but it's nice to see someone taking initiative! :)


 * Also - I recommend that even if this Talk page eventually needs to be split, we keep the attribution section here on top of this page so that people will know exactly where the History is without having to stumble upon it in a previous archived Talk page. :) Runa27 20:58, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Additional categories
I'm going to hunt up some categories to add this puppy to, other than the one the tag puts it in. Other than this simply being the proper thing to do with a new article, it will also have the effect of possibly attracting more editors to this now-seperated article. The first I plan to add to it will be Category: Fan fiction, which... is an obvious choice, but still. :P Runa27 20:58, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I have also taken the liberty of adding the article to the "Issues in international law" category, which should cover most of our bases pretty nicely, though I'm also going to check and see if there's an "issues in copyright law" type subcategory, which might also be a good one to add it to. Runa27 22:23, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

"Arguments for the legality of fan fiction" section isn't
That is, it contains almost no arguments for fan fiction's legality. What it does contain is a list of various creator's reaction to fanfiction.

This blawg contains a fairly lengthy analysis of fanfiction by a lawyer who works in the field of publishing. (I believe he represented Harlan Ellison in the AOL lawsuit, for instance.) Obviously the author has a particular bias, but it's at least a thoughtful look at it, with references. --Starwed 02:12, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Misc cleanup
I split off a lot of the "legality" section into an "attitudes" section, since that's what it really was. I deleted a paragraph about fanfic of "real people" as it seemed to be just speculation:
 * Several people have argued that fan fiction about real people is less risky legally than fan fiction about fictional characters. A Beatles fan fiction website has argued that when you write about a fictional character, you technically "steal" the character, but fan fiction authors can also get in trouble for writing about real people if it slanders (or "flames") the subject.

I also removed a line that stated:
 * To avoid these lawsuits, many writers just add a disclaimer to their work to ensure that it is not theirs.

Since I couldn't even discern what it was intended to say. --Starwed 21:17, 5 August 2007 (UTC)


 * It seems to me that it was intended to say that fanfiction writers add a disclaimer ("The settings and characters belong to JK Rowling and Warner Bros.") in order to avoid plagiarism/theft accusations. --151.202.95.74 (talk) 00:10, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Lucasfilm?
"Most major studios and production companies tolerate fan fiction, and some even encourage it to a certain extent... A noted exception is Lucasfilm, which has threatened or sued many sites precisely because of their non-commercial nature."

There are many, MANY, web sites with Lucasfilm fan fiction out there, particuarly Star Wars and Indiana Jones fan fiction, including livejournal and fanfiction.net. The only thing I've ever heard of them threatening to sue over is magazine picture scans. So I took it out. Perhaps Lucasfilm did have a problem with fan fiction at one time or a specific type of fan fiction if anyone can clarify that. 68.62.227.73 03:58, 2 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Many years ago, Lucasfilm had a major cow over fanfic that included Luke/Leia 'ships. Once it was revealed that the two were siblings, the reason for their problem with this rather obvious pairing became more evident. (I'm sure there's still L/L smut [Rule 34!], but it's more underground where Lucas doesn't see it.) -- Orange Mike 13:09, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Fan fiction writers/IP holder interaction
Wondering if there might be a way to include the information in this article which is about FanLib and Showtime and how they successfully ran a fan fiction type contest. It goes towards demonstrating more positive relationships pretty free of antagonism. -99.142.34.147 (talk) 01:23, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Fanfiction.net
We should probably clarify that Archie Comics barred the use of their ORIGINAL characters (Archie, Betty, Veronica, Jughead...)... licensed ones like Sonic and Tails, Princess Sally, Rotor, and so on are in the clear (properties of Sega). RingtailedFox • Talk • Contribs 04:27, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Fan fiction with real people
Like band members, people who are living, etc exists as well. I believe this would be under defamation of character if one was to sue? That might be one area to add to this article.--Hitsuji Kinno (talk) 02:35, 8 April 2010 (UTC)
 * As always, we need citations to reliable sources discussing this. -- Orange Mike  &#x007C;   Talk  14:15, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Is fanfiction a derived work?
One of the commonly disputed points w.r.t. the legality of fan fiction is whether a piece of fanfic, which contains no text (or other excerpts of things in 'fixed' form) from the original, is even a derived work from a copyright perspective. Some fanfic retains the names of characters, in which case a trademark or character-copyright (if such exists in the relevant country— a citation would be needed) might be applicable, but much fanfic does not, in which case it's unclear what would make it a derived work in the first place. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:470:B:4CA:1000:0:1:31 (talk) 20:03, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Actually, after almost forty years in fandom I've never seen any advocate of the legality of fanfic make that argument. The arguments that come closest to convincing, IMHO, are those arguing that a work of fanfic may be "transformative" or constitute a commentary on the original; but if the characters are identifiably those from a copyrighted work, it's pretty damned disingenuous to pretend that a work containing them is not a derivative work. Certainly no lawyer has ever advanced such a theory, to the best of my knowledge. -- Orange Mike &#x007C;  Talk  19:38, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Kindle Worlds
It might be appropriate to discuss Amazon's Kindle Worlds project, sanctioned, published fan fiction with guidelines. Tons of news about it over the last few months. 74.196.226.38 (talk) 04:03, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Copyright holders' attitude towards fan fiction edits
This section of the page has broken links, sentences that don't follow from previous sentences and isn't organized. I made an interim edit to fix broken links and fix sentences that didn't make any sense in context.

I also split the different copyright holders between "Studios, Productions Companies, and Producers" and "Authors" as I think their relationship to the works are different and should be categorized differently. Many authors don't own the legal rights to their works, or only own some of the legal rights, and many of their opinions are more emotional in nature. While producers may be more analogous to authors in some respects, producers seem more appropriately grouped with studios and production companies as, unlike authors, their works are far more collaborative.

I then placed a lot of the remaining information in a category titled "Changing and Selective Policies" because it seems difficult to place that information alongside many of the static opinions in the previous two sections.

I did not remove any information from the article.

I would still like to clean up this section. Does anyone have other suggestions for arrangement or content or style that we can use to improve this section to wikipedia standards?

Jay Clemm (talk) 18:17, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

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United States copyright law
I feel that the first section (and possibly the second) contains an excessive amount of background information, some of which may be irrelevant to the topic. – Laundry Pizza 03  ( d c&#x0304; ) 22:40, 1 June 2018 (UTC)