Entertaining thought experiment
Awww, llama!!! *hugs the mysterious joy-giver*
I thought for the last bits of More Joy Day I would entertain you all with a thought experiment I have rambled about to a few people before, re: fanfiction and what if in some frightening dystopian future it was somehow stamped out by a giant stompy boot of authority. :D No, wait, really, this will be fun!
So here's the experiment: let's say in this terrifying brave new world, you, poor writer, forbidden to share your stories of John and Rodney's love, instead write a story about these characters George and Harry who at some time in the past traveled through the Ring of Infinity to the Andromeda Galaxy where they found the mysterious lost city of the Founders powered by the glowing Columns of Power and met the aliens Vincia and Gohren.
Let's say I then install a firefox extension on my computer which happens to translate "George" into "John" and "Harry" into "Rodney" etc etc.
Your story is not going to be findable by any search mechanism looking to pattern-match against unique terms used in Stargate Atlantis. But when I read it, your story will still appear to me to be about Stargate Atlantis. If I google-search through this extension for "John" and "Rodney" and "Stargate", it could automatically translate that into a search for "George" and "Harry" and "Ring of Infinity".
Okay, so: who here is doing any copyright infringing? The individual author? She has posted a story about different-named characters using science fiction concepts which are ideas and not inherently copyrightable. It is not in any way under her control what I do to my browser to change the appearance of her story.
The individual reader who applies John and Rodney's names to the author's story or their google search? But they have not published a story or even created any kind of fixed work -- the altered story exists only ephemerally in their computer's memory and goes away after. The person who creates the firefox plugin that translates some strings in a story into other strings, based on a text file of input? Nothing copyrightable here.
The person distributing a text file that provides the translations? We're talking just a page of text with lines that look like: George | John, Vincia | Teyla, etc. Anyway, worst-case anyone could just create a page like that themselves on their own computer and it wouldn't be being distributed at all. Someone who posts a page of instructions on how to install the software to make stories appear to be about SGA? You're not even breaking the wacky DMCA rules against undoing encryption mechanisms, nothing here is encrypted.
The entertaining part of this is when you consider that of course, any reader could use any script on any story at all. Maybe you wrote that crazy space incest story about Simon and River, and *I* would like it to be about Dean and genderswapped Sam in a strange far-future AU! Maybe I have to reinstall my browser one day and I don't have the plugin for a bit and I get used to reading about George and Harry -- so I use my plugin to change a Stargate Atlantis tie-in I have in HTML form to be about George and Harry! You will never want for stories in your rare pairing or fandom again! Any story you want can now be about whoever and whatever fandom you want! Freeeeedom ---
*is dragged off stage with a hook, still yelling about the violence inherent in the system*
ps I really want someone to make this :D
I thought for the last bits of More Joy Day I would entertain you all with a thought experiment I have rambled about to a few people before, re: fanfiction and what if in some frightening dystopian future it was somehow stamped out by a giant stompy boot of authority. :D No, wait, really, this will be fun!
So here's the experiment: let's say in this terrifying brave new world, you, poor writer, forbidden to share your stories of John and Rodney's love, instead write a story about these characters George and Harry who at some time in the past traveled through the Ring of Infinity to the Andromeda Galaxy where they found the mysterious lost city of the Founders powered by the glowing Columns of Power and met the aliens Vincia and Gohren.
Let's say I then install a firefox extension on my computer which happens to translate "George" into "John" and "Harry" into "Rodney" etc etc.
Your story is not going to be findable by any search mechanism looking to pattern-match against unique terms used in Stargate Atlantis. But when I read it, your story will still appear to me to be about Stargate Atlantis. If I google-search through this extension for "John" and "Rodney" and "Stargate", it could automatically translate that into a search for "George" and "Harry" and "Ring of Infinity".
Okay, so: who here is doing any copyright infringing? The individual author? She has posted a story about different-named characters using science fiction concepts which are ideas and not inherently copyrightable. It is not in any way under her control what I do to my browser to change the appearance of her story.
The individual reader who applies John and Rodney's names to the author's story or their google search? But they have not published a story or even created any kind of fixed work -- the altered story exists only ephemerally in their computer's memory and goes away after. The person who creates the firefox plugin that translates some strings in a story into other strings, based on a text file of input? Nothing copyrightable here.
The person distributing a text file that provides the translations? We're talking just a page of text with lines that look like: George | John, Vincia | Teyla, etc. Anyway, worst-case anyone could just create a page like that themselves on their own computer and it wouldn't be being distributed at all. Someone who posts a page of instructions on how to install the software to make stories appear to be about SGA? You're not even breaking the wacky DMCA rules against undoing encryption mechanisms, nothing here is encrypted.
The entertaining part of this is when you consider that of course, any reader could use any script on any story at all. Maybe you wrote that crazy space incest story about Simon and River, and *I* would like it to be about Dean and genderswapped Sam in a strange far-future AU! Maybe I have to reinstall my browser one day and I don't have the plugin for a bit and I get used to reading about George and Harry -- so I use my plugin to change a Stargate Atlantis tie-in I have in HTML form to be about George and Harry! You will never want for stories in your rare pairing or fandom again! Any story you want can now be about whoever and whatever fandom you want! Freeeeedom ---
*is dragged off stage with a hook, still yelling about the violence inherent in the system*
ps I really want someone to make this :D