J.Jasper wrote: > David Dyer-Bennet wrote: >> >> Joshua Kronengold <mneme at io.com> writes: >> >>> Scott Ingram writes: >>>> From: "Gametech" <voltronalpha at hotmail.com> >>>>> Joshua Kronengold wrote: >>>>>> Copyright should have a fixed term, both out of interest of >>>>>> fairness, and to encourage creators of any age -- a monetarily >>>>>> motivated 90 year old should expect to provide for their >>>>>> children if they produce a best-seller just like a younger >>>>>> author might try to provide for their later years. By the same >>>>>> token, though, anything other than a fixed term isn't reasonable >>>>>> -- a reductio ad absurdium of this is a work written by an >>>>>> immortal or virutally immortal creator -- such a thing will >>>>>> never go out of copyright, and by principle 1, works should be >>>>>> guarunteed to go out of copyright. >>>> Reductio absurdium indeed. You might as well say that copyright >>>> will be rendered useless because one day we might be able to >>>> record our memories digitally. >>> >>> That's a tangent, and has nothing to do with copyright. >>> >>> The point is that fixing copyright to anyone's lifespan is ludicrous >>> unless you think the possibility of someone writing a parody or >>> fanfic (or even commercial variant on same) is a tragedy. And as >>> much as it might feel like one (just like, say, a negative review), >>> it's not -- it's just a thing. >> >> Parody is protected fair use, so that's not at issue. Most fanfic >> *is* a tragedy. The better fanfic is a tragedy *twice* (they should >> have been writing something original). >> >> I don't see how I can protect the creators rights if the creator can >> be forced to sit by and watch people totally pervert his creation. >> > > How, sir? A tragedy? > > While fanfic being publicly published without an author's permission > is dangerous in respects to an author's rights, I'm going to disagree > with the "should have been writing something original". > > Sometime I *want* to read more set in a certain universe. Sometimes I > have dreams about an author's universe. I had one about Heinlein's > _Friday_ at one point, and there's a novel that I'm slowly putting > together about it. My novel. For me. I may, if I show it to a few > selected friends without any chance of it getting set free into the > wild, contact Heinlein's estate and ask them if they'd like to do a > deal on it, but it is essentially their property if I release it to > the public without a contract. > > You may find that to be a tragedy, but I assure you, I don't. I don't > think I shouldn't have dreamt that. I don't think it isn't a neat > idea, and I don't think I'm doing anyone any harm if I have this > private idea, or even if I share it with a few friends. If I > published it in a zine without the owner's permission, that would be > a tragedy, because I'd have committed a grave breach of good manners. > > And to think I tested as a Yendi on the "what house are you?" test. I > should have been an Issola. Exerpt from http://www.calpoly.edu/~cschefti/Talks/IPRW/outline.html The intent of copyright protection *is* to promote the progress of science and the useful arts, so authors get a mini-monopoly as one inducement to develop new work, but copyright is limited when it appears to conflict with the overriding public interest of encouraging further development; *is* not to promote the author's own interests or increase the author's own wealth. Copyright gives authors the following exclusive, intangible rights: reproduction right: the right to make copies of protected work; distribution right: the right to sell or otherwise distribute copies to the public; derivative right: the right to create new works (derivative works or adaptations) based on the protected work; performance and display rights: the right to perform a protected work, such as a stage play, or to display a protected work, such as a film, in public (where the specific rights depend on the medium). Additional, related author's rights include: rights of attribution: authors have the right to have their names associated with their work, and rights of integrity: authors have the right to not have their names associated with unflattering modifications to their work. Each of those rings true (especially the *is not* intent, that is a byproduct) take that as far as you can, I agree that for those who simply can't get enough of the idea of a certain universe fanfic might be their kind of thing, It's a huge thing in the Anime community (often the writing isn't that deep to begin with so random authors can do a decent job.) Some people want to tell a story but prefer to use someone's ground work, that to me seems like reality. Not everyone is good at making up a distinct universe, and they content themselves with taking a tangent on someone else's. The biggest produced type of media that is pretty much a big huge fanfic fest is comic books, the writers whom are professionals often write in universes they did not create. That to me aside the fact they have authorization explicitly is about as identical to fanfic as you can get (often the authors are past fans of the title they write for). If you had never read Steve's books the comic book would have seemed like much less of a 'tragedy' and the funny thing there is to my knowledge that went through the proper legal channels and it turned out worse (in many of our opinions) than a fan would have done.