Here via metafandom. Your post is very interesting.
What I just don't understand is what the person who is stealing and posting gets out of it. It's not like money is changing hands here. When we make something fanish and post it online the payment we get is comments stating that people like or admire our work. If the comment is praising something you did not do, how can it feed your own creative soul or ego?
I think you have to look toward fandom as a social experience for answers to that.
Plagiarism can help bring someone up the social/exposure ladder of a fandom very quickly. It can keep them high in that social hierarchy for a very long time, and the longer they remain, the more entrenched they become. The Ozmandayus situation in Buffy versus XF a few years back showed exactly what a powder keg that can become--I personally identified at least one hundred XF stories he plagiarized across his stories, but he was so entrenched in his fannish circle that the vast majority of his readers really didn't give a damn.
Here via metafandomrydra_wongDecember 28 2009, 21:43:11 UTC
The only next step I see is formalizing that complaint in regards to copyright law--aka, filing a DMCA complaint with fanfiction.net. That concept, obviously, opens up a whole 'nother can of worms. It at least implies that the person is willing to consider further legal action . . .
More than that: a DMCA takedown notice involves stating, under penalty of perjury, that you are authorized to act for the copyright holder.
In other words, if you aren't the copyright holder, you open yourself up to legal action.
IIRC, one fanfic writer tried issuing a DMCA takedown notice to get a MST3K of her Harry Potter fic taken down, and found herself hearing from J.K. Rowling's lawyers (I believe she didn't end up in court, as they didn't want to sue a clueless teenager, but it was rather firmly communicated to her that she might not want to go representing herself as the copyright holder of Harry Potter in future).
Re: Here via metafandomxie_xie_xieDecember 28 2009, 22:06:52 UTC
Not sure I follow this. The author of Harry Potter might have a legal argument that I don't have the right to write fiction with her characters/settings etc, but isn't that a separate legal issue from whether or not the plagiarist did or didn't write my work?
I wouldn't hesitate to file a DMCA takedown notice about a specific work of fan fiction that I had authored, and would only be claiming I own the rights to copy THAT ONE WORK, not the entire Harry Potter oeuvre for all eternity and since the dawn of time.
I don't actually write in the HP fandom, and in fact have never read a single HP book or seen one of the films. But the principle seems clear to me: Even if JK Rowling can prevent me from publishing a HP fan fic piece, she can't herself claim she owns the copyright to my work. I may or may not have the legal right to publish it, but I still have the right to prevent someone else from doing so.
Re: Here via metafandomcschickDecember 28 2009, 22:16:48 UTC
I may or may not have the legal right to publish it, but I still have the right to prevent someone else from doing so.
Including, in my understanding, JKR.
Even if a work is ruled to be infringing, I believe that still doesn't bestow on even the person infringed the copyright OF the infringing work. I have been told that it places it into a strange limbo, where you do not have the right to distribute, but neither does the author of the original work (without your permission).
I'm (maybe) one of the lucky oneswriterjcDecember 28 2009, 22:22:14 UTC
Here via metafandom as well.
A few months ago, I receive a politely worded email from someone telling me that someone had plagiarized a couple of novel lengthoriginal fics I'd posted on fictionpress.net (they posted them to fanfiction.net under an anime fandome that I don't read). They kept my summary and clearly did a search and replace on character names only. Even my typos were still there!!
Worse, this person had a gazillion reviews and gads of people following MY story.
I complained to ff.net and got no response at all. Nothing. So, a fake fanfiction.net account later and a politely worded review outing them to all their fans, the stories came down and my alter ego I received an apology saying that they'd meant to take them down cause they realized they belonged to someone else (!!) via PM
( ... )
Re: I'm (maybe) one of the lucky onescschickDecember 28 2009, 22:43:05 UTC
Also as one of those XF writers from back in the day, it never occured to me that this might be happening in that fandom. Thanks for the heads up. And what an interesting quandry it raises.
The internet both has an incredibly long memory, and an incredibly short memory.
There seem to be quite a few shows on the air right now that make "transferring" of xf fics into their fandom quite easy--for example, I've seen an explosion of xf plagiarism in Bones fandom in recent months.
Re: I'm (maybe) one of the lucky onescofax7December 29 2009, 01:00:00 UTC
for example, I've seen an explosion of xf plagiarism in Bones fandom in recent months.
... which must make romances interesting. I mean, I'm not a Bones fan, but isn't the woman the one who's eccentric & weird in that pairing? Thus confounding any characterizations accomplished via a straight search-and-replace of character names...
I'm not sure if there are young authors out there who stumble across Gossamer and think that the stories are so old that nobody will recognize them, so old they're just for the taking, or what.
I have to say, as a current XF writer? This makes me burn with rage. We're still here, motherfuckers, okay?
I know someone downthread mentioned stop_plagiarism; I really think the work they're doing is awesome. Public shame works here, since the goal is public praise. But it's a shame that FFN is so unwilling to act, and that there are, really, so few options apart from publicity here.
Anyway, not much to say on the legal-y questions, but wanted to comment, at least in part to thank you for all the work it must take to keep Gossamer going. Even if I can't be arsed to figure out how to submit to it. *thumbs up in your general direction*
In the past, I've tended to recommend that people wait on the public shaming, because FFN has always kind of had the stance of "well, it's gone now, so whatever." If the plagiarist removed the stories before FFN got around to investigating the stories, that was apparently considered good enough. So, if an author really wanted to see the "ultimate" punishment of account deletion, it was better that the public shamefest not take place.
Comments 24
What I just don't understand is what the person who is stealing and posting gets out of it. It's not like money is changing hands here. When we make something fanish and post it online the payment we get is comments stating that people like or admire our work. If the comment is praising something you did not do, how can it feed your own creative soul or ego?
Reply
Plagiarism can help bring someone up the social/exposure ladder of a fandom very quickly. It can keep them high in that social hierarchy for a very long time, and the longer they remain, the more entrenched they become. The Ozmandayus situation in Buffy versus XF a few years back showed exactly what a powder keg that can become--I personally identified at least one hundred XF stories he plagiarized across his stories, but he was so entrenched in his fannish circle that the vast majority of his readers really didn't give a damn.
Reply
More than that: a DMCA takedown notice involves stating, under penalty of perjury, that you are authorized to act for the copyright holder.
In other words, if you aren't the copyright holder, you open yourself up to legal action.
IIRC, one fanfic writer tried issuing a DMCA takedown notice to get a MST3K of her Harry Potter fic taken down, and found herself hearing from J.K. Rowling's lawyers (I believe she didn't end up in court, as they didn't want to sue a clueless teenager, but it was rather firmly communicated to her that she might not want to go representing herself as the copyright holder of Harry Potter in future).
Reply
I wouldn't hesitate to file a DMCA takedown notice about a specific work of fan fiction that I had authored, and would only be claiming I own the rights to copy THAT ONE WORK, not the entire Harry Potter oeuvre for all eternity and since the dawn of time.
I don't actually write in the HP fandom, and in fact have never read a single HP book or seen one of the films. But the principle seems clear to me: Even if JK Rowling can prevent me from publishing a HP fan fic piece, she can't herself claim she owns the copyright to my work. I may or may not have the legal right to publish it, but I still have the right to prevent someone else from doing so.
Reply
Including, in my understanding, JKR.
Even if a work is ruled to be infringing, I believe that still doesn't bestow on even the person infringed the copyright OF the infringing work. I have been told that it places it into a strange limbo, where you do not have the right to distribute, but neither does the author of the original work (without your permission).
Reply
Reply
A few months ago, I receive a politely worded email from someone telling me that someone had plagiarized a couple of novel lengthoriginal fics I'd posted on fictionpress.net (they posted them to fanfiction.net under an anime fandome that I don't read). They kept my summary and clearly did a search and replace on character names only. Even my typos were still there!!
Worse, this person had a gazillion reviews and gads of people following MY story.
I complained to ff.net and got no response at all. Nothing. So, a fake fanfiction.net account later and a politely worded review outing them to all their fans, the stories came down and my alter ego I received an apology saying that they'd meant to take them down cause they realized they belonged to someone else (!!) via PM ( ... )
Reply
The internet both has an incredibly long memory, and an incredibly short memory.
There seem to be quite a few shows on the air right now that make "transferring" of xf fics into their fandom quite easy--for example, I've seen an explosion of xf plagiarism in Bones fandom in recent months.
Reply
... which must make romances interesting. I mean, I'm not a Bones fan, but isn't the woman the one who's eccentric & weird in that pairing? Thus confounding any characterizations accomplished via a straight search-and-replace of character names...
Reply
Aka, Scully to the extreme. A lot of xf writers got almost to the extent of Brennan writing Scully.
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I have to say, as a current XF writer? This makes me burn with rage. We're still here, motherfuckers, okay?
I know someone downthread mentioned stop_plagiarism; I really think the work they're doing is awesome. Public shame works here, since the goal is public praise. But it's a shame that FFN is so unwilling to act, and that there are, really, so few options apart from publicity here.
Anyway, not much to say on the legal-y questions, but wanted to comment, at least in part to thank you for all the work it must take to keep Gossamer going. Even if I can't be arsed to figure out how to submit to it. *thumbs up in your general direction*
edited for html fail
Reply
Doesn't seem to matter anymore.
Reply
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