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'm fine with that -- but I'm not -- for the reasons stated in the post above -- fine with publication of the fanfic in the same medium as the original text. I'm not fine with people turning the work in to a commercial venture that I don't have say in, because almost by definition in this society, it's the commercial venture that defines the canon.
And I can certainly see that it's an issue that people feel strongly about. Where the medium differs, I do think it's less of an issue.
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.
Sort of. The Buffy franchise doesn't control fanfic, and it never will. But it does control anything you have to pay money for, and it always will (if it knows about infractions). It's something you accept if you want to write in their universe and get paid.
If you were to publish a Buffy book of fanfic, the appropriate lawyers would eat you alive. So in this case, they're don't care what stories you tell yourself, they only care about the money that those stories don't make <wry g>. The same can be said about Star Wars fanfic, etc.
In either case, they're not trying to control what stories are told, just what venues they're told in.
I'm embarrassed to say that I don't actually know what the copyright extension act by Disney is; I remember Cory Doctorow talking about it, but I don't actually remember the content, only the hyperactive intensity <wry g>.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2004-10-20 01:15 pm (UTC)I'm fine with that -- but I'm not -- for the reasons stated in the post above -- fine with publication of the fanfic in the same medium as the original text. I'm not fine with people turning the work in to a commercial venture that I don't have say in, because almost by definition in this society, it's the commercial venture that defines the canon.
And I can certainly see that it's an issue that people feel strongly about. Where the medium differs, I do think it's less of an issue.
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.
Sort of. The Buffy franchise doesn't control fanfic, and it never will. But it does control anything you have to pay money for, and it always will (if it knows about infractions). It's something you accept if you want to write in their universe and get paid.
If you were to publish a Buffy book of fanfic, the appropriate lawyers would eat you alive. So in this case, they're don't care what stories you tell yourself, they only care about the money that those stories don't make <wry g>. The same can be said about Star Wars fanfic, etc.
In either case, they're not trying to control what stories are told, just what venues they're told in.
I'm embarrassed to say that I don't actually know what the copyright extension act by Disney is; I remember Cory Doctorow talking about it, but I don't actually remember the content, only the hyperactive intensity <wry g>.