Hi,
*delurks*
I have a B7 fanfic question. I've been browsing about a bit reading fics here and there, and I was wondering. If you were to read a fic on a site, then find another fic on another site that was *extremely* similar to the first one you read, just with tiny changes, posted by a different author, would you do anything about it? And if you did what would you do?
(I know if it were me I wouldn't want someone copying my work and passing it off as theirs..)
Isobel
------------------------------------------ Dayna: Avon why do you keep everything to yourself? Why so secretive? Avon: Perhaps I'm shy.
------------------------------------------
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Hey,
I guess its really a matter of copy right, and how much a work has to be changed to be original. And which story was actually the first.
Copyright is a breach of the law, and it is made more complex, by the fact that Electronic copyright is different to paper based copyright. Another question is what is best determined by the term Public Domain, etc.
I believe that some thing should be done about it, however, not to automaticly assume that the worst, raher that both may be original works, and just inform both parties first. See if you get any response ?
Regards Tony Nolan
At 09:45 6/11/2001, Isobel Hamilton wrote:
Hi,
*delurks*
I have a B7 fanfic question. I've been browsing about a bit reading fics here and there, and I was wondering. If you were to read a fic on a site, then find another fic on another site that was *extremely* similar to the first one you read, just with tiny changes, posted by a different author, would you do anything about it? And if you did what would you do?
(I know if it were me I wouldn't want someone copying my work and passing it off as theirs..)
Isobel
Dayna: Avon why do you keep everything to yourself? Why so secretive? Avon: Perhaps I'm shy.
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
At 08:45 07/11/01 +1100, you wrote:
Copyright is a breach of the law, and it is made more complex, by the fact that Electronic copyright is different to paper based copyright. Another question is what is best determined by the term Public Domain, etc.
AFAIK, and at least as far as British law is concerned, electronic copyright is the same as paper copyright. However the work is created and stored, the copyright automatically belongs to the author and it is illegal to make copies without their permission. And yes, this does include things such as printing websites onto paper for easier reading.
Any work can be placed in the public domain, by virtue of the author saying that it is so, but the act of putting work on a web page doesn't automatically constitute putting it into the public domain, any more than putting a book in a library makes it public domain.
Issues of fair use, etc, are the same as for works printed on paper. There are some fuzzy areas, especially around the question of hyperlinks, but in general you have exactly the same legal status with regards to ownership of copyright whether you put your work in a paper zine or on the web.
Regards Tony Nolan
love Anna
From: Isobel Hamilton isobel19@hotmail.com
I have a B7 fanfic question. I've been browsing about a bit reading fics here and there, and I was wondering. If you were to read a fic on a site, then find another fic on another site that was *extremely* similar to the first one you read, just with tiny changes, posted by a different author, would you do anything about it? And if you did what would you do?
Well, if the stories in question were about (a) playing hide-and-seek on an overweight shuttle, (b) acting very badly in an antique wine cellar, or (c) a chestful of plasma in an underground base in the middle of a Forestry Commission plantation, then I'd go at least fifty-fifty on it being not plagiarism but mere coincidence.
There have been cases in the past of fanfic being repackaged by unscrupulous dealers - Horizon suffered it about ten years ago - but that was paper zines being bootlegged for profit. There's not much profit in online bootlegging, so I can't see why anyone should want to do such a thing. What's the point?
Neil
Neil Faulkner wrote:
There's not much profit in online bootlegging, so I can't see why anyone should want to do such a thing. What's the point?
Presumably, getting the credit for something without doing the work. Fanfic plagiarism crops up irregularly but persistently; there are a few individuals who simply can't see anything wrong with taking someone else's story, changing a few words (often adapting to a different fandom by simply substituting character names & descriptions), and posting it as their own work. They tend to get caught fairly soon and stomped on hard by the fannish community, but there are always some who will try it (and some who come back and do it again after being caught.)
- Lisa
-- Lisa Williams: lisa@eroicafans.org or lcw@dallas.net Lisa's Video Frame Capture Library: http://framecaplib.com/ From Eroica With Love: http://eroicafans.org/
On Wed, Nov 07, 2001 at 02:01:47AM -0000, Neil Faulkner wrote:
From: Isobel Hamilton isobel19@hotmail.com
I have a B7 fanfic question. I've been browsing about a bit reading fics here and there, and I was wondering. If you were to read a fic on a site, then find another fic on another site that was *extremely* similar to the first one you read, just with tiny changes, posted by a different author, would you do anything about it? And if you did what would you do?
There have been cases in the past of fanfic being repackaged by unscrupulous dealers - Horizon suffered it about ten years ago - but that was paper zines being bootlegged for profit. There's not much profit in online bootlegging, so I can't see why anyone should want to do such a thing. What's the point?
Fame. Getting credit for someone else's hard work. Laziness. Fuelled by a complete lack of shame or conscience. You might as well ask "Why do people put any fan fiction on line, if there's no profit in it?"
There definitely have been cases of online plagiarism before, both intra-fandom and inter-fandom -- sometimes someone has stolen a story from one fandom, and just rewritten it with different character names. Presumably they thought that nobody actually reads multiple fandoms so they wouldn't get caught. (No, I can't quote specific details, my memory is not that elephantine...)
Mind you, there's plagiarism, and then there's influence. I can recall one case (in another fandom) where someone wrote a story which was obviously borrowing heaps of ideas and *images* from another person's story, but it wasn't the same story by a long shot (it was pretty crappy compared to the original). It wasn't exactly plagiarism, but the person was wrong in not crediting where her ideas came from.
In this case, I suggest you investigate carefully. See what other stories the two authors have written. Make careful inquiries. If one of the authors is obviously more talented than the other, guess which one is the plagiariser? On the one hand, you don't want to jump the gun in accusing someone of plagiarism, but on the other hand, deliberate plagiarisers won't blink an eye at lying through their teeth. Another thing: it isn't up to you to confront the plagiariser, if you can figure out which one it is -- that is something that the original author is in the best position to take action on. Just send a note, "by the way, did you realize this story X bears an uncanny resemblance to your story W?"
Yet another thing to consider is that you can't assume that, if the stories have *ideas* in common (as distinct from more closer details) that one is plagiarised from another -- some ideas follow on so logically from things in Canon that it's no surprise that two people might have thought of them independently.
Kathryn Andersen -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Nora: How much did all this cost? Dr. Bloom: I charged it to the Department. Research costs. (Chuckling) It's good for the kids. (VR.5: VR.5)
From: Kathryn Andersen kat@katspace.com
There have been cases in the past of fanfic being repackaged by unscrupulous dealers - Horizon suffered it about ten years ago - but that was paper zines being bootlegged for profit. There's not much profit in online bootlegging, so I can't see why anyone should want to do such a thing. What's the point?
Fame. Getting credit for someone else's hard work. Laziness. Fuelled by a complete lack of shame or conscience. You might as well ask "Why do people put any fan fiction on line, if there's no profit in it?"
Well, maybe I'm just naive, but I've always thought that fan writers do it for the love of it, not for dosh. How many printed zines make a profit, beyond a pocketful of beer money? Not many, I suspect. (I gather Horizon makes some small profit on their zines, but that goes back into the club.) How many zine contributors get paid in actual money, rather than a trib copy? Profit is not the motive, at least in my experience. Publishers only charge for a printed zine because there are costs to cover. Ideally, they would give the things away for free. At least, I would. Am I that unusual (in this specific regard, I mean:) )? Sticking a piece of fic up on the web is about as close to free as you can hope to get. I'd be doing it if I was still writing.
Neil
Well, maybe I'm just naive, but I've always thought that fan writers do it for the love of it, not for dosh. How many printed zines make a profit, beyond a pocketful of beer money? Not many, I suspect.
There are persistent rumors that certain of the fannish presses DO regularly make a profit on their zines. However, we're not talking great wealth, more like the zine money covers the costs of their going to more cons than they could otherwise. And if you consider that the fact that they're selling the zines at those cons, I suppose the plane fare/rooming costs could be considered part of the cost of doing zine business.
would give the things away for free. At least, I would. Am I that unusual (in this specific regard, I mean:) )? Sticking a piece of fic up on the web is about as close to free as you can hope to get. I'd be doing it if I was still writing.
Nope. An awful lot of fan writers mostly want lots of people to read what they write. The bonus payoff being if some of them actually like the story enough to send feed back.
I still think paper fanzines will go extinct as soon as some e-book reader gets widely accepted.
Susan Beth susanbeth33@mindspring.com
Susan Beth wrote:
I still think paper fanzines will go extinct as soon as some e-book reader gets widely accepted.
Oh, I really hope not. I prefer reading print on a page, and turning the pages. Surely I'm not the only one?
Mistral
At 11:52 PM 11/8/2001 -0800, you wrote:
Susan Beth wrote:
I still think paper fanzines will go extinct as soon as some e-book reader gets widely accepted.
Oh, I really hope not. I prefer reading print on a page, and turning the pages. Surely I'm not the only one?
Not at all. But it may become a question of the paper version of a book being an expensive luxury you indulge in for special books while 'ordinary' read once books you buy electronically. Sort of like today's situation carried further. Today you can buy the latest Robert Parker mystery in hardcover for around $20 or as a paperback for around $6. In the future you might have a choice of the paper edition as a luxury item (perhaps with hand-sewn signatures and tooled leather covers -- if it's a luxury item, might as well go all out) or the downloaded version.
So it might be that the 'average' person in future only owns paper copies of a handful of books (like a Bible from confirmation, the copy of Shakespeare they won for scholarship, the particular books they absolutely love and read over and over) while the Jet Set shows off with whole bookcases full of paper.
But you're assuming that future ebooks will look like today's -- and that may not be so. One person has proposed an ebook that essentially would look like a hardcover book: a bunch of pages with a hard cover and spine. The pages would be made from some plastic that looks like paper but each tiny sub-unit of it can be changed from black to white. So you'd load the book with whatever you wanted to read, and then read it like today, paging through actual pages. Apparently they already have a plastic they can make do the color change, it would 'just' be a question of controlling the zillion littles bits of it to create the appearance of ink-printed writing on it. In that case you'd own what looked like a 'real' book, it's just that you'd only need to own one of them which turned at your pleasure into any book.
On Fri, Nov 09, 2001 at 06:32:27AM -0500, Susan Beth wrote:
At 11:52 PM 11/8/2001 -0800, you wrote:
Susan Beth wrote:
I still think paper fanzines will go extinct as soon as some e-book reader gets widely accepted.
Oh, I really hope not. I prefer reading print on a page, and turning the pages. Surely I'm not the only one?
Not at all. But it may become a question of the paper version of a book being an expensive luxury you indulge in for special books while 'ordinary' read once books you buy electronically.
<rant> <expletive deleted> I hope not! What with the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, if all books go electronic, then the future of freedom looks very grim. Did you ever notice the licences that go with E-books? You aren't even allowed to *lend* them to people! You aren't even allowed to assert your Fair Use rights and quote them! People have been threatened and jailed over the DCMA already. This is dire, dire, dire.
Check out <www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html> and http://www.freesklyarov.org
</rant>
ObB7: maybe Orac was invented to get around the Federation's copyright-protection schemes...
Kathryn Andersen -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- "With a ship like this and a full crew, then we CAN start fighting back." -- Roj Blake, to Kerr Avon (Blake's 7: Spacefall [A2])
On Thu, Nov 08, 2001 at 11:52:00PM -0800, Mistral wrote:
Susan Beth wrote:
I still think paper fanzines will go extinct as soon as some e-book reader gets widely accepted.
Oh, I really hope not. I prefer reading print on a page, and turning the pages. Surely I'm not the only one?
No, you aren't the only one. Even when I'm reading fanfic from the net, I usually print it out first...
Kathryn Andersen -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Coser: Did you hear what I said? Rashel: Yes. Coser: Well? Rashel: It's a very clever plan, sir. (Blake's 7: Weapon [B3])
Mistral replied to Susan Beth
I still think paper fanzines will go extinct as soon as some e-book reader gets widely accepted.
Oh, I really hope not. I prefer reading print on a page, and turning the pages. Surely I'm not the only one?
And how dull it would be not having Judith's dealer table to sit behind at cons. On Saturday, it meant I got a fascinating account of early American B7 fandom from one of those who first watched the series as filmed from someone's TV (to avoid PAL/NTSC conversion), with added bonuses like a girl removing her shirt reflected in the TV screen.
At 07:54 PM 11/8/2001 -0500, Susan Beth wrote:
would give the things away for free. At least, I would. Am I that unusual (in this specific regard, I mean:) )? Sticking a piece of fic up on the web is about as close to free as you can hope to get. I'd be doing it if I was still writing.
Nope. An awful lot of fan writers mostly want lots of people to read what they write. The bonus payoff being if some of them actually like the story enough to send feed back.
I don't want anyone to pay me for my fanfic. (Okay, if someone would currently pay me to stay home and *write* fanfic, that would be good, but that's different.)
However--and I'm mostly answering the post you're quoting, Susan Beth, which I missed--that doesn't mean that it would make me happy if someone passed off my fanfic as their own. I *like* my fanfic. Some of it. I'm proud of it. Most of it.
But it's *mine.* I did it. Critique it, parody it, tear it to shreds, mock me publicly--but don't steal it.
-- Michelle Wren-Moyer mmoyer@mninter.net
From: Michelle Wren-Moyer mmoyer@mninter.net
However--and I'm mostly answering the post you're quoting, Susan Beth, which I missed--that doesn't mean that it would make me happy if someone passed off my fanfic as their own. I *like* my fanfic. Some of it. I'm proud of it. Most of it.
That post you missed was mine, and I'm entirely in agreement with you. If someone were to photocopy one of my stories to give to a friend, I wouldn't care, and if they asked beforehand I would say yes without hesitation. If they tried flogging copies to line their own pockets I'd have a few harsh things to say about them. But if they tried to pass something of mine off as their own work, I'd want them hospitalised for a very long time.
Neil
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Anna Simpson -
Harriet Monkhouse -
Isobel Hamilton -
Kathryn Andersen -
Kathryn Andersen -
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Michelle Wren-Moyer -
Mistral -
Neil Faulkner -
Susan Beth -
Tony Nolan