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.
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ninetydegrees
no subject
on 2006-08-21 08:27 pm (UTC)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.