fan fiction and beyond
A few days ago 
shadowkat67 wrote a wonderful piece on on Intellectual Property Law and the Fan - A Primer at her livejournal, which I do recommend that people read. Personally I found it empowering because I was left feeling a little paranoid after Cafe Press refused to have most of my drawings at my 'shop'.
Anyway, I thought aboug S'kat's lj post when I started to listen to this online radio play/fan fiction based on Firefly: Firefly Old Wounds.
I was wondering (to myself) how this would fit in with the criteria S'kat talks about:
Does the work infringe on the original creator’s ability to collect revenue from the original work?
- I would think that this is clearly an homage....and if someone enjoyed it they might want to watch Firefly...
Does it take the place of that work?
- it definitely does NOT take the place of Firefly, since the writing is kind of lame and the acting is terrible....
Does it infringe on the original author's copyright, blurring it, making it fair game?
- this may be the biggest problem, will the owners of Firefly and/or Serenity feel that this blurs the lines for other infringing works based on their property? The comic books which are coming out are also dealing with back story, set during the Firefly series....
And is the original work copyrightable to begin with?
- so I'm very ignorant about all of this...but it does seem to be that this production is more of an infringement than regular fan fic.
BTW I know that saying the writing is lame (which it is) and the acting is bad (and it is horrible) may sound like a bad review, but actually the story is interesting and I'll be continuing to listen to future chapters.
shadowkat67 wrote a wonderful piece on on Intellectual Property Law and the Fan - A Primer at her livejournal, which I do recommend that people read. Personally I found it empowering because I was left feeling a little paranoid after Cafe Press refused to have most of my drawings at my 'shop'.
Anyway, I thought aboug S'kat's lj post when I started to listen to this online radio play/fan fiction based on Firefly: Firefly Old Wounds.
I was wondering (to myself) how this would fit in with the criteria S'kat talks about:
Does the work infringe on the original creator’s ability to collect revenue from the original work?
- I would think that this is clearly an homage....and if someone enjoyed it they might want to watch Firefly...
Does it take the place of that work?
- it definitely does NOT take the place of Firefly, since the writing is kind of lame and the acting is terrible....
Does it infringe on the original author's copyright, blurring it, making it fair game?
- this may be the biggest problem, will the owners of Firefly and/or Serenity feel that this blurs the lines for other infringing works based on their property? The comic books which are coming out are also dealing with back story, set during the Firefly series....
And is the original work copyrightable to begin with?
- so I'm very ignorant about all of this...but it does seem to be that this production is more of an infringement than regular fan fic.
BTW I know that saying the writing is lame (which it is) and the acting is bad (and it is horrible) may sound like a bad review, but actually the story is interesting and I'll be continuing to listen to future chapters.