In re Kerfuffle

[rozk]

I was impressed, still am, by giogio's post about the inadvisability of bringing the Califironia authorities into the kerfuffle; one of her assumptions though is that we are in clear breach of copyright. There is a very interesting post here - pointed out to me by Rob Hansen in Making Light that argues something quite contrary and reassures me that maybe the fanfic apocalypse is not as imminent as I feared. Which leaves us with the under age stuff which is more worrying.

Comments

[lesbiassparrow.livejournal.com]

The thing is that no one will know until it all gets hauled into court, which will be terrifically expensive for whoever gets to be the unlucky person. And if what is hauled into court is about under age characters going at it or rapefic or something else fandom related that is even iffier in the eyes of the general public, then it will not only be horrifically expensive for whoever is the test case but also potentially career and life destroying even if they won the case.

[giogio.livejournal.com]

Heh. I'm actually on the fence regarding the copyright issue. I think that it could go either way re fanfic since the appropriation of copyrighted material for artistic purposes is pretty widespread in the art world, and in the past it has very much depended on a jury's/judge's definition of art whether or not something was found to violate copyright. However, I'm pretty firmly convinced that one shouldn't tempt fate (and possibly definitive test cases), by throwing the whole thing into a bucket with much more volatile matters, such as child pornography, because the likelihood of somebody taking a very dim view indeed of fanfic by association increases exponentially.

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

Moreover, even if fanfic ultimately proves to be transformative and thus not a copyright violation, there's enough actual violating going on surrounding the creations: icons, vids, d'load coms, etc I, for one, would much rather *not* anyone looks to closely at our subculture...

[boji.livejournal.com]

The rumours of coming legislation - both in the US and the UK - make me very worried that download comms and the use of megaupload etc. are what will bring a huge wacking spotlight our way. I think if it was just a matter of fic and icons they might not waste their time (and see it as free addvertising) but they see dl'ds as loss of revenue, just as they had trouble with Tivo first launched with the option to opt out of commercials...