Subject: Eric Flint
Author:
Posted on: 2009-04-07 16:40:00 UTC
The 1632 series was initially conceived to be just written by him, but what ended up happening was that he invited other authors to cowrite the main novels with him and there's also a pay-for e-zine of fanfic for the series.
He edits said fanfic himself. And it's made canon.
Hi, y'all. Emerging from my lengthy school- and work-induced absence to ask you clever people for some help. ^^;
I must write a two-part paper for my Engligh class. Specifically, a position paper (where I take a stance on an issue) and a proposal paper (where I present a possible solution/whatever for said issue).
The issue I chose was fanfiction. More specifically, fanfiction with regards to copyright law, and whether or not authors have any legal right to sic lawyers on fan-authors/artists/etc who aren't making any monetary gain off their fan-stuffs. (For the record, I'm siding with the fan-authors, etc.) And I'm having trouble with it, as it's been hard for me to find references to use, and I have little to no idea what kind of proposal I could make about this.
So, yeah. Can someone please help me? This is due this week! o_O
Much thanks,
~ Rath ~
Try metafandom on del.icious, and the Organisation for Transformative Works - both lots of material if you go digging.
random lurker just chipping in >
Oops, hit send to soon. Just a random lurker chipping in here...
You could look up Gregory Maguire. He wrote Wicked, which is basically a fanfiction of The Wizard of Oz, AND got it published. Just a thought.
She did a rather lengthly study that basically concluded that when fanfiction can be considered a transformative work, the author's distaste for it is not reason enough to suppress it. There's a lot of other issues around that so don't quote me directly, but I found it useful.
...find that paper, very helpfully linked from TV Tropes. It is indeed a useful piece, and thanks for the additional rec on it. ^_^
~ Rath ~
The 1632 series was initially conceived to be just written by him, but what ended up happening was that he invited other authors to cowrite the main novels with him and there's also a pay-for e-zine of fanfic for the series.
He edits said fanfic himself. And it's made canon.
But you might want to look up the people who've banned Fanfiction of their work. Anne Rice and such. See what they're doing to try and stop it. Another interesting thing to look up would be any authors who actively encourage fanfiction etc., and how.
What I normally do for my essays is head to wikipedia, scan read, scroll to the bottom and check out the citation links, and any other links. I mean, fanfiction leads to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalissueswithfanfiction, and that has lots of interesting looking links.
Google books might be worth checking out as well.
For the proposal, do you just have to present one solution or many possible ones? Either way, try a spider diagram. Scribble down all the solutions you can think of an work off them. The only thing I would point out is that if you're siding with fan authors then you need to think of what the issue that you need to address is. Is it checking that people aren't copying your work word for word or that they're not making money off it? The first is easyish to solve (searches for text chunks), the second a little more tough. If you want a solution to how to stop fan authors altogether, then you really do need to check out Anne Rice etc.
Good luck.
... you might particularly look up Anne (it's always the Annes!) McCaffrey. She formerly banned fanfic, but as of June 4th, 2006, she allows it (with rules and guidelines). Nothing specifically legal, but there might be something in it.
hS
Raymond E. Feist, writer of the Riftwar Saga and many surrounding volumes. He doesn't allow fanfic either, as far as I'm aware.
According to his Wikipedia article, George R. R. Martin does not allow fanfiction based on his works. And while I'm usually all for freedom and stuff, I'm quite happy that Westeros is a Sue-less area.
I'm a big fan of GRRM.