FanFiction: Keeping It Legal

[Danja]

"Fans own copyright in their own original contributions to a fanwork — they don’t own anything about the underlying work it’s based on, but they do own what they have made." Rosenblatt says. "The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) allows copyright owners, including fan-authors, to request that something be taken down if it infringes copyright."

"If you wrote a story and someone uploads it to Amazon without your permission, even if they change the names, they're infringing on your copyright." Tandy adds. "Fanfic writers and fan artists can register their works with the U.S. Copyright Office, or their nation's copyright office. While the rules of registering bundles of works have changed in the last year, it's still possible to register a collection of stories, or a collection of art, every 10-11 weeks, especially if you're worried that someone may use your art on print on demand content without your permission."

However, when authors or any other fan creative gets a DMCA take-down notice, Rosenblatt suggests that they not panic. "In those situations, fan-authors can protect themselves by submitting what is called a 'counter-notification,'" she says, explaining that their work is fair use and asking that their work be put back up because it should not have been taken down."


https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/how-to-keep-fanfiction-legal-and-avoid-trouble-with-lawyers

 

[Admiral2]

People need to get past this myth that Fair Use protects fan fiction. It doesn't.

Fair Use protects news, reviews, education and parody related to original works.

If your story isn't reporting on the original work, it's not protected.

If the original work is not source material for instruction, it's not protected.

If what you're writing is not a review of the original work, it's not protected.

If what you're writing doesn't transform the work into something funny or porny or anything that's obviously not what the creators of the original work intended, it's not protected.

The overwhelming bulk of fan fiction is stories written by fans that are meant to be part of the universes they're set in. Few are actually parody, and - lets be honest - claiming the rest are news, reviews and educational texts is just a bald faced lie, which means none of it meets the standards of the Fair Use clause of Copyright Law. If the day comes when the IP owner of your fandom decides to layeth the smackdown on your work, their lawyers are going to pee themselves laughing if you try to defend yourself with Fair Use.

What really protects your fan fiction is Commonality and Apathy: there's so much of it out there that it's practically impossible for IP holders to police all of it, so they often don't try, saving their large and expensive legal divisions for taking down the truly egregious and stupid infringers. (You might want to visit the Fan Production forum for a good example.) Does that mean you should stop writing fan fiction? I would never say that. I'm saying you should go into it knowing exactly what you're doing and what rights you and the IP holders actually have.

 

[Kor]

Wellll, the interviewees in the article are experienced intellectual property lawyers, so it seems like there should be at least a little bit of weight to what they say, doesn't it?

Kor

 

[Jayson1]

Time for fans to start exploing the adventures of Captain Jay T K Curk of the spaceship Interpise and friends Sponk and Boney. Jason

 

[SLWalker]

The whole reason OTW (the Organization for Transformative Works) exists is to advocate for fanfiction to fit under fair use. And considering they have the money and lawyer-ly types working hard on it, then I'm all down for it.

 

[Sgt_G]

Wellll, the interviewees in the article are experienced intellectual property lawyers, so it seems like there should be at least a little bit of weight to what they say, doesn't it?

Wasn't the lady who took the Alec Peters case an "experienced intellectual property lawyer"?? Seems to me to be a data point against them knowing what they're talking about.