I Don't Care, I'm Still Free
While most people, especially in the States, have been wrapped up with Super Tuesday (I Grok Barack, if you're curious), I noticed something else happening online...but first, I should probably provide a bit of background.
After the release of Serenity, Pocket Books had a contract to publish original tie-in novels based on the franchise. (They had already published the novelisation of the film.) A bunch of established authors eagerly submitted outlines, but they all required approval by Joss Whedon, which wasn't forthcoming, and Pocket eventually cancelled the contract as a result.
Despite this, Steven Brust (skzbrust) went ahead and wrote his novel anyway, and (after some excerpt readings at conventions) he has now posted the entire novel, My Own Kind of Freedom, online.
I'm probably not going to read this novel, to be honest, but the legal questions surrounding its posting are very interesting to me--especially in light of what I last wrote about here, and the tension I sense between fan fiction and media tie-in fiction--because Brust released the novel under a Creative Commons licence. The thing is...well, he doesn't own the rights to either Firefly or Serenity.
Does Brust have the legal right to dictate the licencing terms of this work, given that he doesn't own the overarching intellectual property? And if not, does his licence really mean anything?
After the release of Serenity, Pocket Books had a contract to publish original tie-in novels based on the franchise. (They had already published the novelisation of the film.) A bunch of established authors eagerly submitted outlines, but they all required approval by Joss Whedon, which wasn't forthcoming, and Pocket eventually cancelled the contract as a result.
Despite this, Steven Brust (skzbrust) went ahead and wrote his novel anyway, and (after some excerpt readings at conventions) he has now posted the entire novel, My Own Kind of Freedom, online.
I'm probably not going to read this novel, to be honest, but the legal questions surrounding its posting are very interesting to me--especially in light of what I last wrote about here, and the tension I sense between fan fiction and media tie-in fiction--because Brust released the novel under a Creative Commons licence. The thing is...well, he doesn't own the rights to either Firefly or Serenity.
Does Brust have the legal right to dictate the licencing terms of this work, given that he doesn't own the overarching intellectual property? And if not, does his licence really mean anything?