--- Battou1028@aol.com wrote:
Due to an act of plagiarism that happend to a member
of my mailing list, Kenshin Fanfic Discussion, my fellow
administator, Robin-san, posted this for all to see. I
in turn have forwarded this here, as it concerens everyone
on this ML as well; I suggest to those of you who have
archives, that you place this somewhere in it. I can assure
you it's going up on the KFFDisc website, ASAP.
Ah, of all the times for me to have been away for a couple of days...
One thing that wasn't mentioned was the copyright status vis-a-vis your
own fanfics. Technically, you -cannot- successfully sue somebody for
infringing on your fanfiction. Why is this? US law does not require you
to register a work to gain copyright protection, but you -do- have to
register it within thirty days of filing suit on behalf of a violation
of that work. However, your opposition could then, quite easily, state
that the registered work was improperly registered, as it itself
infringes on another work. Your registration gets thrown out and so
does your case. Whoops. ;p
OTOH, that still requires some action on the part of the defendant.
This is why many US authors do not allow fanfiction (or at least
strongly enforce their copyright). The case with Lackey that was
mentioned earlier was on the grounds that the plaintiff felt that
Lackey had infringed on one of the plaintiff's original ideas, and
incorporated it into the canon without credit or compensation.
This gets worked around in several ways. In the case of Larry Niven, he
just calls the lawyers out; works every time, but expensive. The
Babylon 5 ML specifically prohibits the posting of fanfiction, so that
the writers that are subscribed to the ML are not exposed to liability
if they had something similar in a future script. Anybody that's ever
played a PBEM RPG set in the Pern universe has probably seen the ornate
sets of rules that McCaffery places around such activity.
I figure that adding the phrase, "Any of the ideas, characters, or
situations herein are provided for the original creator's use without
restriction" couldn't hurt matters. Of course, if a creator -were- to
want to use one of your ideas, then they could despite your objections.
Ah, well... it's better than getting sued, I think.
As to whether fanfic is legal or not... despite much argument about
what constitutes fair use, a better assault might be centered on Title
17's definitions of "derivative". Without restating it here, let me
just sum up that written fanfiction of an animated work doesn't really
fit in under any of the circumstances outlined in the definition of
"derivative work" and thus isn't really a copyright issue. 'Course,
then you get into trademark problems, but that's a whole different
kettle of fish, and most anime fanfic is pretty much invulnerable to
trademark infringement suits anyways. I detail this in the Anime Ethics
and Legality FAQ, at http://www.usagi.com/gameman/anime/legalfaq.html,
just in case. Anybody that actually gets in a legal furball over a
fanfiction matter, I'd like to hear the details.
Other than that, pretty much everything is correct. You can be sued for
anything! ;p
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