Readers and writers

[owlmoose]

So I know that fanficrants can be a scary place, but this post is actually generating some interesting discussion, particularly in this thread.

Who owns a story? The writer? The reader? A writer of course can pull down any story at any time, but do they have the "right" to demand that every copy of the story be deleted? (From the Google cache, from the Internet Archive/Wayback Machine, from people's harddrives, etc.) Does a reader have the "right" to be able to find the story again? Do they have the "right" to download it, to pass it on to friends, to write their own fanfic based on it? Complex questions, I think.

I tend to think that, once a story is posted to the Internet, we lose control over what happens to it. It's out there, in the world, free to be read, reviewed, linked, copied, downloaded, fanficced. Why should we expect more control over our writings than traditionally published authors? A professional writer could never demand the return every publically available copy of a book. Once published, it's out there. Even if such a thing were possible, the story would live on, in the minds of the people who had read it.

Personally, I tend to think of a story as a collaboration between its writer and its readers. The writer creates the story, but it doesn't really come to life until someone else reads it. Perhaps this is a part of why we all adore reviews so much: a review is proof that someone read, that the story did indeed take on that life of its own. Maybe not the life we inteded for it, but a life all the same. (I think this is true for all stories, not just fanfic, although of course the feedback loop is more immediate in fandom.)

Anyway. Just my random thoughts on a Thursday evening. What do you all think?

Comments

[xerne.livejournal.com]

I have fic saved on my harddrive that will probably never see the shining lights of the internet again. It's stuff I enjoy re-reading in particular moods, much the same reason I keep books. I don't think an author has the right to tell people not to keep copies of something, and though I can think of a situation where I might think an author's request were reasonable ("I wrote that horribly racist/sexist/homophobic story before I understood that it hurts people" maybe? I've never liked a story like that, but I suppose it's possible someone might) I don't think people are obligated to delete something that's privately saved.

On the other hand, the author has every right to pull something down from public display IMO -- deleting their ff.net account, telling the Internet Wayback Machine to stop archiving their old web page, or even complaining to a webhost about a site that's archiving their work against their will. The difference to me is that fic on a website can still be found, while what I have on my harddrive can't.

[owlmoose.livejournal.com]

This is all very reasonable. It seems to me to be the most analagous to what happens when a book goes out of print: you can't go out and find a new copy any more, or not without a lot of difficulty anyway, but anyone who snagged a copy while it was still available will have their version to keep.

Now I am starting to wonder if I ought to be downloading my favorites....

[xerne.livejournal.com]

I'd say you should.

But then again, I am an internet packrat.

(And as someone who's been obsessively photocopying from certain out-of-print books at the library lately, I think anyone who goes to that much trouble is entitled to the words, copyright violation or no. =P)