SGA - wank with an underlying principle!
Aug. 21st, 2006 12:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wordplayThose of you not of the SGA persuasion might miss this (unless you also spend time at Journalfen) but there's a kerfuffle over at ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
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![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
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
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
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
on 2006-08-21 08:12 pm (UTC)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....)
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.