Crossing the Streams

[anarchicq.livejournal.com]

I asked this question in Fandom Wank, but I want to ask it here.

There have been posts about Fanlib TPTB taking fanfic posted their and using it to produce episodes (Fanisodes). and all the fic author gets is...the specialness of having helped make an episode.

No one ever said anything about keeping the fics within their fandom.

What will the fan do if they wrote a fic for House wherein House has to give his dying yet abusive father a heart transplant?

Then, next week on Grey's Anatomy, McDreamy has to give his dying yet abusive father a heart transplant?

THEN what? Recognition? Or theft?

Comments

[chichiri-no-da.livejournal.com]

The first thing that pops into my head reading that is: Let's say I write a fic for House with the vague understanding that FanLib sometimes swipes fics for such purposes, and then Grey's Anatomy shows this episode... am I going to sue Grey's Anatomy?

This is making my head hurt @_@

[meoinya.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, fic authors have to live with things like this. It isn't fun to be plagerized but, we have no legal claim to the characters we write about nor the situations we put them in.

I wouldn't be surprised to find FanLib does this, or plans to do this.

Most who write for tv and film won't even look at fanfic because they don't want to be influenced. It would be very bad for their career if the press got a hold of something that could be proven was plagerized.

[angiepen.livejournal.com]

This is one of the reasons why professional writers don't read fanfic.

I had a friend back when who knew Misty Lackey (Heralds of Valdemar, etc.) and was over at her place once when they were opening mail. Misty generally didn't read anything that looked like a manuscript from a fan, although she (like many writers I assume) often got fans sending her stories for whatever purpose. She opened an envelope that looked like something else, then realized it was a story and literally flung it across the room, very O_O at having almost read it. She had Morgan (above-mentioned friend) pick it up, put it back in its envelope, seal it and write a witness statement that she'd been there when Misty'd opened the envelope and that she had not read it. Because amateur writers often don't understand that ideas aren't unique and if they know for a fact that a pro has seen "Fan Story Q" and then read "Pro Story R" with a similar sounding idea in it, they'll often scream "Theft!" where there was none.

In TV writing, unagented scripts generally aren't read for the same reason; not because someone new might not be a good screenwriter but because someone new enough to think that the sacred IDEA is all is likely to send an unsolicited and unagented script in for an episode based on Idea X, have it rejected, and then see that the next season there's an episode based on Idea X and get all frothing at the mouth because "obviously" they stole his/her idea when in actuality it was no such thing. Sending all unagented manuscripts back unopened is much easier for the studio than dealing with outraged baby-writer hysterics and possible lawsuits, which would be expensive and a bother for the studio even if (likely when) they won. The hope is that someone who knows enough to get an agent will also know enough to realize that they're not the only person in the world who could possibly come up with a story where Joe SeriesGuy gets bitten by a demon-bug that turns him invisible or whatever.

What a lot of amateur writers (whether fan or otherwise) don't get is that 1) ideas are not unique and 2) it's not the "idea" that's important anyway. Coming up with a "story idea" is the easy part. Most working writers have more ideas than they can ever hope to write in their lifetimes. Yes, different people will have the same idea independently -- it happens all the time and doesn't mean that one of them is OMGstealing!! from the other. And if multiple people do write a story based on the same idea, I can guarantee you that they'll go about it differently and will end up with two different stories. Check out oxoniensis's Porn Battle (http://oxoniensis.livejournal.com/286546.html) for a lot of examples of different stories written to the same prompt. I wrote to [Draco/Giant Squid, "my what big tentacles you have..."] which actually calls out characters and sounds pretty specific in a crack!fic sort of way but the other story written to the same prompt is very different from mine. The execution is much more important than the "idea."

[Continued on Next Rock...]

[angiepen.livejournal.com]

[...Continued from Previous Rock]

I'm pretty sure that if a TV series production team was handed the idea, "Joe gets bitten by a demon-bug that turns him invisible," they'd have to pay a professional screenwriter (who knows about formats and pacing and timing, how to make the story come in at exactly the right number of minutes and how to work it so the commercial breaks come at exactly the right spots, etc.) just as much to write an actual script from it, so they wouldn't be saving any actual money even if they didn't get sued. I'm not saying it couldn't ever happen, but I have a hard time imagining why a studio would want to do this, when it wouldn't save them any money but would open them up to a possible lawsuit. It just doesn't make financial sense and money pretty much rules most of their decision-making. :)

In the case of the "fanisodes," everyone participating knows in advance what they're getting into and that the series might end up using some chunk of their writing in an actual show and that they won't be compensated for it beyond the T-shirt or whatever token thingy was offered. That being the case, I wouldn't bet on any court deciding that the fan writers were due any money just because the episode was scrubbed down and re-dressed for a different show. The whole fanisode thing is a situation where "Don't like? Don't participate," works nicely.

Angie

[inkscribe.livejournal.com]

Nicely explained. :-)

Even outside writing, many ideas come up concurrently. Look at the controversy over accusations of Leibniz stealing Newton's work on calculus ... when they did their work independently of one another back in the 1600s.

On a related note, you can't invent multiplication the way we do it until you invent the concept of place value and stop using Roman numerals. Once place value became an established concept, it opened the door for all sorts of other innovations in maths that could otherwise not be done.

And as you've mentioned here, LJ prompts show us the wondrous amount of variety that comes from the same core idea. Which is why yes, lots of us write stories based on other people's characters or universes, but the story as written is unique to ourselves, and that's the part that we own. "Anything you recognise I do not own."

[house-illrepute.livejournal.com]

apparently their ToS and FaQ both claim that they cannot -- or will not -- do this.

still, how concrete is that?

if they say: oh, we won't do anything with your story or idea without your knowledge

but then say: the ToS has the right to change at any time

and then hit you with: changes of ToS are retroactive

then they could certainly lull you into thinking your ideas are safe... then change the rules... and be able to grab whatever and use it even if it was posted before the ToS rule-change... you could terminate your account, but the ToS extends past termination...

yeah...

FanLib + writer's strike + the end of money-making series without suitable replacements = stiff the lowly commoners.

no thanks.