Rant about fanfiction and copyright

[matrixrefugee]

My one wish this Christmas? That the U.S. copyright laws on fiction and fanfiction would get replaced with the Japanese copyright laws re: same.

There's a discussion on lkh_lashouts re: LKH and fanfiction. Now, while I understand why some authors would have "no fanfic plz" clauses in their contracts or have made public statements to that effect, but... I find it annoying when someone who isn't that author decides to be the Fanfic Police and do a "no fanfic plz" on other people. Might be a backlash from the debacle with Lee Goldberg on the original Orange Board version of Godawful Fanfiction, where the guy castigated all of us for being fans of fanfiction and attacked me for my "A.I.: Artificial Intelligence" fics. You could tell the guy had no teeth in his arguments when he yelled at me because I'd written Gigolo Joe as a male prostitute. Duh! Anyone who's watched the movie would know I was in the right because, well, as the green-eyed silicon hottie would say, "It's what I do." ( :: Pauses a moment to chase off a plot bunny for an "A.I."/Evangelion crossover:: Joe/Ritsuko might be really cute and Ritsy-poo might be less bitchy afterward [plus I could totally see her hiring our silicon hottie to try and make Gendo jealous, but we know how badly that would backfire...], but I don't need any more ideas...)

The case at hand: a middle-school teacher saying there is a "no fanfic plz" clause in their classroom, the poster's argument being that it's to protect the kids from plagiarism suits. I think after the file-sharing debacle in which RIAA went batshit on middle-school kids, no lawyer in their right mind would do something like that, if they didn't want the press to do the same thing to them, and make them and their client look like bullies shaking kids down for their lunch money (the case where RIAA tried to get CPS to slap an "unfit parent" charge on the single mom of one kid was an all-time low; thankfully, CPS turned around and said, "What are you talking about? This kid is doing just fine, now stop wasting our time when we could have been saving kids from being molested."). This could have it's upside: it could be protecting us from yet another bumper crop of bad Twhinelight fanfic, but I can't help seeing a lot of kids being denied a pastime that I find dear to my heart. Maybe a "don't ask, don't tell" policy ala Jim Butcher's take on it would be a good compromise.

Comments

[matrixrefugee.livejournal.com]

Mmm, now that I'm more alert, I'm better equipped to give this discussion a better assessment, and I have to agree, this teacher has some very valid reasons, even if I have a hard time seeing them...