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And this is why your metaphor sucks.
May. 10th, 2010 10:47 pmThere's been a LOT of stuff flying lately about authorial opinions on fanfic, and essentially whether we have the right to it, and so on. I'm sure everybody's read themselves sick on it, or chosen to ignore it because we all have the same arguments every year or two with a different group of authors.
Obviously I think fanfic's okay. Fanfic is modern-day storytelling, the kind of remixing that happened around campfires and hearthfires for thousands of years before the concept of copyright was invented. What the Brothers Grimm collected was fanfic. Paradise Lost is fanfic. Most of Shakespeare is fanfic. The modern fairy-tale retellings are fanfic, Star Trek novels are fanfic, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is fanfic. Dave Barry wrote Peter Pan fanfic. Modern-day comics writers are essentially writing fanfic for Batman and Superman and Spider-Man. (HERE ARE MORE EXAMPLES!) People have been telling and retelling and recreating stories since the telling of stories began, changing things around to suit the tale they're telling and their audience. It only got complicated in the last century or so, when people (and corporations) were able to take their stories and say, hey, this is MINE and you can't have it unless you pay me for it. I don't have a problem with copyright. The problem is when you say that something is protected, then all the people who were inspired by that story, to do something with the story, are now somehow committing a violation when they do what they've been doing all along.
( I go on at length, guys. Be forewarned. )
Obviously I think fanfic's okay. Fanfic is modern-day storytelling, the kind of remixing that happened around campfires and hearthfires for thousands of years before the concept of copyright was invented. What the Brothers Grimm collected was fanfic. Paradise Lost is fanfic. Most of Shakespeare is fanfic. The modern fairy-tale retellings are fanfic, Star Trek novels are fanfic, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is fanfic. Dave Barry wrote Peter Pan fanfic. Modern-day comics writers are essentially writing fanfic for Batman and Superman and Spider-Man. (HERE ARE MORE EXAMPLES!) People have been telling and retelling and recreating stories since the telling of stories began, changing things around to suit the tale they're telling and their audience. It only got complicated in the last century or so, when people (and corporations) were able to take their stories and say, hey, this is MINE and you can't have it unless you pay me for it. I don't have a problem with copyright. The problem is when you say that something is protected, then all the people who were inspired by that story, to do something with the story, are now somehow committing a violation when they do what they've been doing all along.
( I go on at length, guys. Be forewarned. )
