Comments | carole_london: No copyright infringement is intended....

carole_london

No copyright infringement is intended....

Apr 27, 2011 11:21

I might just be getting old and crotchety, but does anyone know what writing "No copyright infringement is intended" on fanfic actually means? Or whether fanfic writers have any idea what they think they mean by it ( Read more... )

Comments 7

corbyinoz April 27 2011, 10:37:11 UTC

Crikey! Okay, I knew letting you loose with Scribe and her bunch of MK crazies was a mistake. Pour that woman a Pimms! (And get me one while you're at it, wench ( ... )

carole_london April 27 2011, 11:30:35 UTC

Oh yes, it's a minefield not least because of the extra-juridical issues. What's acceptable in Orstralia (pretty much everything as long as it's cooked on the barbie) might not be allowable in the UK (the "tighter than a fish's arse" end of the spectrum, I'm suspecting ( ... )

corbyinoz April 27 2011, 22:03:20 UTC

I think some authors are terribly twitchy about it all, and others are more relaxed. As for the disclaimer being a guide to badfic - well, I daresay a lot of writers just put that on because they've seen it elsewhere, may be new to posting, and are probably still so thrilled at the thought of putting their fic out there that they don't give two seconds' thought to the wording of whatever they've cut and copied from someone else.

My utterly failsafe guide to bad fanfic is the summary; Aragon and Legelus meet a high school girl called Tiff'anee in Middle earth. I suck at summeries but its really good. Plz read and revue!!

Fly, you fools!

corbyinoz April 27 2011, 22:07:46 UTC

Oh, and don't believe it re the copyright stuff over here being more slack. Pah! to your colonialist assumptions! This bloody shindig has got you all royaled up, hasn't it, so you're going to come all high and mighty over us convicts over here. (You going? Or are you washing your hair that night?)

No, it varies between individual publications, between individual databases and individual contracts of use. Some publications we can reproduce in full if it's for on campus study purposes, some it's ten percent or one chapter, some stuff we can reproduce but only have available for thirty days and only on closed access sites... And we can pretty much reproduce the entire book if it's out of print longer than a year.

jayb111 April 27 2011, 11:15:59 UTC

I think what they're trying to say is 'this isn't mine and I'm not trying to pretend it is.' But I agree 'no breach of copyright' isn't accurate. It doesn't help that a lot of fic writers aren't clear on what copyright actually is and confuse it with plagiarism (which most of them can't spell ( ... )

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corbyinoz April 27 2011, 22:00:00 UTC

Indeed! Well played, her. And really, it's the only realistic response. Be precious all you like, but people are still going to be writing using the characters if they like them, so take it as the compliment it is.

And I can understand an author not wanting beloved characters to be horribly traduced in some way... although, again, I suppose if someone wants to do so, there's little that can be done to stop them. Just makes it harder for them to put it about for others to read.

readerjane April 28 2011, 11:09:32 UTC

Yeah, not well thought out at all.

I think there's an important distinction, which usually gets ignored, between saying "I'm going to take your characters and worldbuilding and tell my own story with them, whether you want me to or not," and saying "Lookit me I WROTE this thing which really somebody else wrote." Two very different transgressions -- copyright infringement and plagiarism, and it befuddles me how some folks don't seem to know the difference ( ... )