I didn't say anything to the post last night, nor to the comments because I'm afraid some of it might have come across as picking a fight. People feel very strongly about this issue. At the end of the day all we can 'own' is our ideas, our feelings, and perhaps if we're lucky, some cat hair. (I think this is where I insert your wry grin.)
That being said, the right to set canon is incredibly important to me.
It should be. It's your world and characters. The canon is set by you in the act of writing it and putting it out into the world. Beyond that what anyone does with it is up to them. I write fanfiction in Star Wars, which as a franchise has hit just about every medium that it can be, now. Books, movies, comics, cartoons, television, marketing of every type of item imaginable. I have never presumed that 'my' take on a Star Wars character is a canon one, nor that it ever supercedes that which the original creator(s) did.
I've had people write fanfiction that spun off of my fanfiction and it was an uncomfortable feeling. They took my 'original character' that I'd put into a story and had him do things I could never imagine. It made me sit back and look at the act that I myself was doing by writing such stories. In the end I came to the conclusion that once it is out in the world I don't own it anymore (and yes, I do understand legal copyright and defending it but I'm talking about the individual right to re-interpret the material they see and do something with it).
Stories are so much a part of the world and our culture that I don't think they can be owned, not really, and the attempt to control them, or more properly, what people do with them, is a futile exercise that will only raise blood pressure.
And yes, I think the copyright extension act by Disney is stupid too.
On the other hand I was highly upset when I found out one of my photographs had been slapped up on a website and had been passed around without credit. When I'm given credit I'm not nearly as upset, even if I wish I wasn't associated with the work in question (and that's a whole different bucket of worms).
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2004-10-20 12:21 pm (UTC)That being said, the right to set canon is incredibly important to me.
It should be. It's your world and characters. The canon is set by you in the act of writing it and putting it out into the world. Beyond that what anyone does with it is up to them. I write fanfiction in Star Wars, which as a franchise has hit just about every medium that it can be, now. Books, movies, comics, cartoons, television, marketing of every type of item imaginable. I have never presumed that 'my' take on a Star Wars character is a canon one, nor that it ever supercedes that which the original creator(s) did.
I've had people write fanfiction that spun off of my fanfiction and it was an uncomfortable feeling. They took my 'original character' that I'd put into a story and had him do things I could never imagine. It made me sit back and look at the act that I myself was doing by writing such stories. In the end I came to the conclusion that once it is out in the world I don't own it anymore (and yes, I do understand legal copyright and defending it but I'm talking about the individual right to re-interpret the material they see and do something with it).
Stories are so much a part of the world and our culture that I don't think they can be owned, not really, and the attempt to control them, or more properly, what people do with them, is a futile exercise that will only raise blood pressure.
And yes, I think the copyright extension act by Disney is stupid too.
On the other hand I was highly upset when I found out one of my photographs had been slapped up on a website and had been passed around without credit. When I'm given credit I'm not nearly as upset, even if I wish I wasn't associated with the work in question (and that's a whole different bucket of worms).