SGA - wank with an underlying principle!

[wordplay]

Those of you not of the SGA persuasion might miss this (unless you also spend time at Journalfen) but there's a kerfuffle over at sga_flashfic that's just INTERESTING, particularly as it appears to be time for LJ based fandom to have another broad and meandering discussion about intellectual property. This time, the basic question is: is it cool to use another person's fanfic as the jumping off point for your own fic without clearing it with the original writer? The majority opinion seems to be, "um, no, and haven't we covered this?" but there's a vocal minority who insist that since we never ask permission from the writers of the original source material, there's no moral or ethical obligation to ask for that from fanwriters, either. This cannibalizing of source material, the mishmash collage approach to ideas and inspiration, that's just what we do, they say - it's part of what the fannish writing collective is all about.

I... actually think they might be right.

One arguable position is that maybe it's OK to use the work of someone who's not of your tribe as your jumping off point. I have said before that I'm somewhat uncomfortable with the presence of creators at cons and maybe this is part of why. Is this basically about belonging to a subculture and a community and not screwing over your fellow fen? Or is it simply that professional writers got paid for their work and so they've gotten their due off of it, whereas a fanwriter's rewards are more intangible and therefore need to be more protected and more carefully preserved?

What do you think? I'm still working this out for myself. Is there a REASON that within the community, fanfic writers' rights to their property ought to be more respected than the rights of the writers of the source material? And what is that reason?


ETA: OK, I think I have worked this out a bit more now. Thoughts behind the cut.

What's interesting to me in the post by rivier and the comments she gets there is how they address this point head on by basically saying, "look, everyone knows these are fandom rules, so quit trying to act like they're not." There's also some talk about legality, which I find amusing, because the point goes something like, "the original creators are never going to say yes, because they're legally bound not to, so what's the point of asking? So this, really, is totally different". Fair points, I think.

fairestcat says something along the lines of, "look, whatever used to be the rule? I'm fairly sure it's not anymore, and the mods at sga_flashfic would have done better to stick to their guns." The comments there are interesting, because the point is made over and over that this is not a new fight, that fandom's been arguing about this for forever.

One thing that's interesting, though, is that I actually DON'T know if this will hold forever, if fandom can forever have this distinction of what is and isn't OK to steal. I was reading last week about the piracy issues that are at stake in Sweden's electorate right now and thinking about a culture in which piracy has become a norm rather than an exception. It is argued in at least one of those threads that the reason fandom has rules about how to be properly derivative of another fan's work is because it keeps us a kind of honest, since the act we're engaging in is transgressive by nature. I wonder - as internet culture becomes even more comfortable with piracy, and file sharing and downloading become even more a way of life, will this trigger a shift in fandom culture and mores? If piracy is normal, will we continue to really see fanfiction as so transgressive? And if we don't, will we NEED to have such rules about each other's work in fandom? And wow, wouldn't that be exciting - because fanfiction is social currency for so many, and what would happen if it weren't? You get all these comments like, "I spend hours writing fic and I don't want someone going in and ripping it up" and WOW that's a whole kind of entitlement there. I thought writing the fic was supposed to be its own reward, because it's fun, but statements like that pop up over and over and they seem to assume just a whole ton of things, the bottom line being that the writer has earned something with those hours, and that earning will be reduced by another person trouncing over the same ground. I feel like the social currency of fandom is in flux - do we even know what it is anymore?

OK, so that para was just me getting all excited, I admit it. :)) But it's so interesting to think about, to wonder what kind of odd little consequences might lie in store for this tiny little fractious community. This is easily THE property issue of our time (well, maybe - people are saying the same thing about the Net Neutrality stuff) and it's so much about the way we live and wow. :D

Comments

[nystana.livejournal.com]

Aw, no fair. No links?

[wordplay.livejournal.com]

Oh. Well, I mean, it's all right there in the top five posts or so, so look at all of it to trace the evolution of the situation, but the big mess starts here.

There are posts all over LJ as well, but I don't know most of those people and am hesitant to link to them. There's a post on this over at F_W which has more links if you want a broader sense of what people are saying.

[nystana.livejournal.com]

Wow. Thank all things I've been skirting the net lately. Seriously, thanks for the link - I probably would've found it soon enough but this was way faster. ;) How is everything else on the home front?

[kerri]

Hm. You know, I'd say that this is one of those things where it's nice and polite if you clear it with the other writer, but not actually required. But I don't have the patience to actually figure out what this entails - are the people going to write fics that are rewriting other people's? Or are they just writing fics based on other people's? Because while the first definitely requires permission, the second one doesn't technically.

But, as I said, it would be polite if someone did ask for permission. I think that fandom definitely has it's own set of morals that revolves around the idea that we have to seem to have some conditions and restraints that we apply to our authors, otherwise we're all thieves and plagiarisers. It's an effort to distance ourselves from the very real idea that it's only the idea that we're not making a profit that keeps us from plagiarising and copyright infringement - and even then, no schoolteacher or professor would ever want to see a piece of fanfiction cross over their desks.

So I'd say I'd be tempted to label it an 'honour among thieves' sort of thing. It'd be nice and polite for you to ask the original author for permission, but if the piece of writing is just used as a jumping off point, rather than being altered or rewritten in any way, I'd say that technically, the other fanfic writer is free to do as they please.

[wordplay.livejournal.com]

It's an interesting thing, these conventions, because I can't help feeling like they're transitional. Or maybe it's just that they ARE so subtle that makes them feel this way. I wrote an addendum to my original post, which addresses some of these points.

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

Oooh, that is interesting. Are you on the chix-talkin-fix mailing list? If so, would you be interested in posting this as a discussion topic there? Because this is exactly the sort of thing we love to get into, and we're a multi-fandom discussion group. :-)

[wordplay.livejournal.com]

I totally am not, and things are about to be an order of magnitude more complicated around here and I absolutely cannot join another talking group. :)) But feel free to link it - I think it's an interesting question.

[longtimegone]

This time, the basic question is: is it cool to use another person's fanfic as the jumping off point for your own fic without clearing it with the original writer?

So, basically, fanfiction of fanfiction, right?

I think it's fine. I mean, that "vocal minority" makes a very good point in that that's what fanfiction is. I kind of think that the argument that the original author (i.e. JKR) gets paid for their writing so to use their story as a jumping off point is okay is wanky to the extreme.

Frankly, I think complaining about someone writing fanfiction of one's fanfiction is ridiculous and hypocritical. :))

http://wordplay.livejournal.com/399396.html?replyto=3105828

[wordplay.livejournal.com]

But it's fandom tradition!


...


Yeah, I know, it doesn't really work for me either. See how I tried, though?

[raynbow.livejournal.com]

I think that's kind of an amusing and ironic discussion, and I'm just fascinated by the people who try and justify the apparent 'majority' position. I mean it just... This is not your Earth Logic....

[wordplay.livejournal.com]

No, it's totally community bound - fandom logic is often not Earth Logic, which is why when people take plagiarism squabbles outside the fanfiction community and into the community of professional writers, they get a lot of very confused expressions and complete dismissals. I think fandom forgets how bound and inherently self-referential it is sometimes. *pets the little fandom*

[mofic.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I even know what SGA stands for (Star Gate Something - Star Gate Anonymous?) and I know about this kerfuffle! Interestingly (well, to me), I taught myself to write slash by rewriting someone else's story. I didn't know from remixes or fannish culture or anything like that. It just seemed like the kind of exercise one does in creative writing classes, so I did. I did ask the author of the original fanfic if I could post my rewritten version of her story and she said "no" so I didn't. I OTOH wouldn't mind at all if anyone rewrote any of mine - I'd think it kind of flattering. I wrote a post on this issue a while back, Plagiarism and Fanfic, or How I Stopped Worrying And Learned to Write Slash. I got some interesting comments.

[praetorianguard.livejournal.com]

Heh. I've been trying to figure that out for years, but I'm generally considered not qualified to discuss it since I'm not a writer. :P There was a huge to-do a couple years ago, though, when nocturne_alley ended and some people were writing fanfic based on those characters and some of the players were less than pleased. Which is another look at the same issue, I think.

*whistles* Do you have any idea how badly I'd like to see this submitted as some sort of presentation at Phoenix Rising? *can never have enough fandom meta*

[ali-wildgoose.livejournal.com]

hmm.

I'm a bit too busy at work today to write this up tidily, but in brief...

-- I agree with those who are saying this is a Rule of Fandom. The thinking behind this rule, when I've discussed it, seem to be that the source authors operate on one level and the fanfiction authors operate on another; it's ok to write fanfiction about published work without permission, because permission in that context is impossible to begin with and impractical besides, but there's nothing stopping you from getting permission from another fanfiction author. Some would call this "honor among theives," but I prefer to think of it as polite. I'd also argue that while writing a fanfic based on other fan work is sometimes permissible when credit is given where due, leaving off those credits is NEVER ok.

-- On the "I spend hours writing fic and I don't want someone going in and ripping it up" front, I have a lot of sympathy for that outlook. Many authors I know think of fanfic as casual fun of little consequence, which is perfectly fine, but others take it very seriously and work as hard on it as they would an original story. I don't think I'm the only aspiring novelist who thinks of my fanfic story as my "crappy first book" that I nonetheless have to take seriously and learn from. (But whatever, that's a tangential issue anyway)

(er....ok, so not as brief as I'd thought....)

[ali-wildgoose.livejournal.com]

Ah...just remembered the last thing...

I think there's an important difference between a culture of piracy and a culture of fan work, and that's the nature of the IP theft involved.

The first is exactly that -- theft. Questions of morality aside, you're taking a thing that you didn't pay for and using it for your own entertainment, or distributing something you own so that others can do the same.

In the second case, the theft is partial and the result is transformative -- you're creating a new work out of borrowed bits and pieces, expanding upon someone else's IP in order to create your own story.

I think that you're right that a culture where piracy is increasingly accepted may have less of a problem with the idea of fanfiction, but I don't know how much that will impact the fanfic community itself.

[magistera.livejournal.com]

You know, we don't ask permission, but there's also a fairly strong taboo against writing fic in fandoms where the authors/creators have publicly expressed the desire that fanfic not be written for their works - even when the author is someone like GRRM, who's (IMO) unlikely to get all lawyer-y about it.

And given that it's a lot more reasonable to expect a response from another fanwriter regarding the question "Hey, do you mind?", I don't think it's necessarily respecting fanworks more to say that the right thing to do is to ask first, and respect the answer - because conversely, any public statement by the creator is much more likely to be widely known, unless the fan in question is a BNF or includes their preferences in every header (which would in itself probably be seen as wanky, for various reasons).

In short, I don't think it's necessarily useful to bring the whole copyright infringement debate into this discussion - I think it's more a question of etiquette and respect. We (generally) stay away from properties where the creators have asked us not to write fanfic, and not necessarily because we fear the C&D's that might follow. Offering other fans that same level of respect doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

That said, I do think it's sort of silly to say "OMG DUN STEEL MY UNIVERSE" (or plotlines, or whatever). But if people want to join the silly, silly ranks of Anne Rice (or the IMO misguided ones of other creators who are apparently reasonable but disallow fic), well, I think it's only polite to go along with it.