Fanfic, ownership, and metaficcing

[owlmoose]

So I was talking with bottle_of_shine about getting ideas from other people's fic, and today she posted about it, and it got me to thinking.

It seems to me entirely natural that those of us who write fanfic would get story ideas from reading other people's fic. Because isn't that the whole reason for the existence of fanfic? We look at the canon and we say "But what happened next?/But what came before?/But what if it happened this way?" And seems to me that the impulse doesn't go away just because the story we happen to be reading is written by another fan rather than by whoever produced the original.

So I don't see how anyone who writes fanfic can object when someone looks at a story she's written and says "I want to see more" or "I wonder if I could take it in this other direction?" Because that's what she did when she wrote her fic in the first place. I won't quite say it would be hypocritical to object, but I think it leans in that direction. I'm not talking about someone who copies a story word-for-word without proper attribution, of course, or someone who does a "find-replace" on names but otherwise leaves the story intact or otherwise obvious acts of plagiarism. But fic about fic, or a remix, or whatever you call it when one fic is inspired by another, should be legit, and I think that should be a basic understanding among anyone who writes fanfic.

Or am I missing some completely obvious reason that this would be a problem?

Anyway. Part of me would love to see remixing etc.just become assumed as part of fandom culture. I'm not sure the Final Fantasy fandom has a coherent enough community to spread any kind of overall social norm, though. So in the meantime, I vote for releasing fic under a Creative Commons license, which has the advantage of coming in various flavors, so everyone and label their stories with whichever level of protection they're comfortable with. Just this morning, I put up the Attribution-NoCommercial-ShareAlike notice both here and on my FF.net page, and I invite anyone who agrees to join me.

Comments

[owlmoose.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the licenses cover attribution, but I don't think they say anything about notification. You can request it, but as far as I can tell you can't make it part of the terms of the license. You could always make it a personal addendum in wherever you posted the license, though -- "No need to ask permission, but notification would be deeply appreciated" or something along those lines.

I chose the "Attribution-NoCommercial-ShareAlike" options because I don't think anyone should profit directly from fanfic given current copyright laws, and I like the idea of the CC license being perpetuated. This is the flavor I see most often on CC-licensed fanfic; it makes an easy starting point, anyway.

[rabbitprint.livejournal.com]

What I am mostly tussling over right now is the urge to do the 'Attribution' vs the 'Attribution-Commerical OK' line. I don't really care personally if someone takes my stuff and makes a profit off it (so long as there's reference) because I've already given up some of my stuff as commercial fodder before without being financially included, and that's all good. But I know that I probably should not allow that because the amount of bizarre business practices out there can and do become remarkably corrupt. Cough, Fanlib, cough.

I don't think I'd ever, ever get on the radar of someone who'd make a decent profit off remixing anything I came up with, which is why I sort of don't feel like I should put on the No-Commercial tag, but at the same time my cynicism for humanity is warning me otherwise (not to mention, the rest of the pack think it's an awful idea to skip out on it, 'just in case.')

[owlmoose.livejournal.com]

Yeah. The thought of FanLib definitely crossed my mind as I picked the "no commerical" option. I extremely doubt that anyone would look at my work and think it was a sure-fire source of profit. ;) But one never knows. I figure better safe than sorry.

[rabbitprint.livejournal.com]

Yeah -- FanLib made me very aware that, despite the bizarreness of it all, some people might actually go and make a profit off fanfic. I mean, yes, even with crediting and all that, that the 'based on' would be obscured under giddy legalese in the small print of the credits with no real credit given to the author; I think I didn't imagine that for-profit works would be so awful as to do whatever they could to not be respectful of the person they'd be 'basing off of.' WITNESS MY BUBBLE OF BLISSFUL IDEALISM.

That being said, some part of me is very inclined to go ahead and allow the Commercial-OK tag because it's... it feels weird for me to say about my own stuff (NOTE: just my stuff, everyone else is totally cool by me with whatever they choose), 'this fanwork which is based off of a commericial subject can no longer be profited from!!1' because 1. I'm sure they'd do it anyway, only without the credit, 2. it's like the ideas can't be recycled back into the original media they sprang from, great circle of inspirational life and all that.

It's just the sheer disdain of how FanLib handled matters that is making me want to put on the No-Commercial note. Otherwise, I'd gleefully throw out my arms and shout, 'Be free! Be free, little chickadees!'