On Fri, 24 Apr 1998, Nightman wrote:
I've been thinking about last month's discussion of disclaimers quite a
bit; I thought it was interesting and informative, but now I have a new
question on it. I'm hoping we can discuss it a bit.
Even though I'm using some characters & situations created by another
person, I'd say at least 90-95% of my fanfic is my own original work. As
Not unless 90-95% of your fanfic doesn't involve copyrighted elements in
any way. Things which are in violation of copyright are not protected by
copyright law, at least in the portions that are in violation (In a story,
you're likely to be screwed. On the other hand, something such as a book
which has an introduction and then a series of essays duplicated without
permission, the introduction would fall under copyright.)
such, while it wouldn't be legit of me to SELL it since it has
derivative elements, at least the original material is still under my
copyright, correct? So doesn't that mean that I have the right to
control it? To prevent it from being reposted without my permission and
(most importantly to me) to forbid it from being MiSTed?
It depends on how your story is set up and whether you made any explicit
statements about how the story can be used in the body of the fic. If you
post the story to a list in which it is intended for the readers to
provide public C&C on the stories, you have effectively given permission
to people to duplicate your story and repost parts of it with commentary
unless you state otherwise. Mailing lists in general, you are implicitly
contracting to let people duplicate parts of your writings into their
posts to the list, maybe even duplicate the entire thing, as long as they
attribute quotations correctly.
Now, if your story wasn't in violation of copyright (Which all the fanfics
on this list are unless they aren't really fanfics), and if you explicitly
forbid anyone to integrate your post into a post by themselves in some or
any form (Such as saying 'No MiSTs, please'), then you could stop them.
As it stands, though, you can't copyright something that is a violation of
copyright itself, and I assume that you didn't put any such forbiddance in
your story.
However, regardless of actual LEGAL claims, standard Netiquette dictates
that you don't use other people's material against their will, and anyone
capable of some basic politeness will hopefully refrain from using your
story in ways you don't like once they've been informed you want them to
stop. I'd recommend adding an explicit disclaimer indicating what you
will and won't allow, since otherwise, it's standard to do just about
anything in the context of a mailing list to things posted on the list.
(ie, reposting the message in another forum usually violates standard
netiquette if done without permission, but by posting something to a list,
you're usually giving permission to people to respond in any manner they
see fit unless you dictate otherwise or the list has rules limiting
response types)
I was thinking of using something like the disclaimers Chris Davies
uses, where I get the 'incorporating original characters & (materials)'
bit right up front but I'm just not sure where to go from there. "I
forbid this fic from being MiSTed without my express permission!!" just
isn't doing it for me.
Well, pretty much you need to do that, otherwise people might either
accidentally or deliberately misunderstand. Any sort of legal disclaimer
needs to be as comprehensive and clear as possible, even if it comes off
as rude.
John Walter Biles : MA-History, Ph.D Wannabe at U. Kansas
ranma@falcon.cc.ukans.edu
rhea@tass.org http://www.tass.org/~rhea/falcon.html
rhea@maison-otaku.net http://www.maison-otaku.net/~rhea/
"Usagi, with your dex and bad rolling, getting out of BED is a
dramatic skill resolution."--Naru, Sailor Moon Z #9.
Brahma: the Creator.
Vishnu: the Preserver.
Mentos: the Freshmaker.