"To steal a book is an elegant offense -Chinese saying."
Copyright. Ever thought about how much your life is influenced by this simple idea? You watch copyrighted programs on copyrighted machines, read copyrighted passages from copyrighted books. In short, everything man-made is connected to some kind of copyright or patent. Copyright laws were established to protect the original work of authors, artists, architects, and others from plagiarism, which is simply a form of theft. Without such protection, there would be little to gain from developing new and better ways to do things. However, the copyright is wrong. Never saw my stance on that particular question from only reading the headline, did you? Nonetheless, let's take the long way to come to that thesis.
The Statute of Anne is enacted in 1709, which becomes effective on 10th April, 1710. Copyright in books and other writings now has the protection of an Act of Parliament. Prior to this, disputes over the rights to the publishing of books could be enforced by common law. The Statute of Anne (being a law passed during the reign of Queen Anne) is the first modern copyright law in England, and the first in the English-speaking world. Writers are given control of their works for a limited period of 14 years (with the option of renewing for another 14 years).
From there on, it all snowballs. Regulation-horny bureaucrats outcream each other in establishing what is right and what is wrong in regards to copyrighted works. As of this writing, a book will be copyrighted for 50 years after the author is dead. Let's ask ourselves a question here.... It's not about the author's right anymore, is it? We're over in business consumership. Don't fool yourselves. Today's copyrights have shite-all to do with the original intention, namely insuring the author is rewarded for his work. This has fallen into the huge gaping cunt of consumership. Money talks. Anyone willing to ask how much lobbying the Disney company was doing round about 1956, when they original copyrights on Mickey Mouse and his companions were running out? It's no longer a matter of what's right, it's only what's profitable.
To make you understand the importance of copyright, think of Christmas. Last two weeks of the year, snow, over-ornamented trees..bla bla bla... All the things that brings a feeling to your stomach, be it warmth or nausea. But wait. You have to forget Santa Claus. That's right, no man in a red suit with pedophiliac tendencies and his alcoholic companion of a reindeer. If Santa Claus had been created today, he'd been copyrighted, which means that any company that wants to use him would have to pay the company that originally registered him. Do you think the fatty and his white beard would be the grand symbol of Christmas then? Hell, let me bring on some more examples. Examples are good, because they define a concept better than most sentences does. Uncle Sam? You all know the chap in the gauchy hat and the pants, right? Had he been created a few years later, after the inflation of the copyright laws began, the US government would have to PAY someone for the rights to use him on a recruitment poster. You all see where I'm headed right?
"Copyright laws were established to protect the original work of authors, artists, architects, and others from plagiarism, which is simply a form of theft. Without such protection, there would be little to gain from developing new and better ways to do things."
That was before. Nowadays, there's so much copyright it suffocates the very spirit of innovation. You can't do anything anymore, without being certain some sod has done it before. Written works are copyrighted 120 years or even more....Think humanity can last 120 years without starting to repeat itself? As if that wasn't enough, copyrights also includes translation of the text. Add the law about plagiarism, and you'll see that if you want to write a legal book in today's society, you have to make sure neither ideas nor syntax is used before, be it in any other language. How is that going to be possible?
Humanity hasn't evolved all that much over the last thousands years. Sure, we've developed tools. Big hurrah. With those tools, we've made bigger, better and more advanced tools. Sure, yeah. Whatever. In case you didn't know it yet, a man of the atomic age is no smarter than a peasant from Egypt pre-pyraminds. He knows more, yes. That's because someone has told him that. We're told in school how things work. We don't work out things like nuclear theory or rocket science by ourselves. Back to the subject on hand, after having established that humans are thinking in similar orbits, regardless of the epoch. 120 years. Even by accident, you're not allowed to write something that resembles anything already written. I bet a whole slew of people give up their dreams of writing, thinking some bugger already has written what they wanted to. Literature doesn't have a half-life. A book written hundred years ago is still readable today. Admittedly, if it was shite when it was written, it probably won't be much better a hundred years later, but the essence of this still stands. Neuromancer by William Gibson will probably be readable a hundred years from now, not as sci-fi, but 'alternate history', rather.
Let me cut directly to what I want to say. There is no such thing as absolute copyright, no matter what lawyers with cumstains on their custom tailored suits says. There are things that can't be copyrighted, such as ideas, facts, titles, names, and short phrases. James Bond? He was originally an ornithologist until Ian Fleming borrowed his name for his famous agent, without asking him for permission, I might add. So what does that mean? Well, there's nothing stopping you from writing a book with a character named James Bond. There is, however, a huge Moloch of anal-retentive bureaucracy that will rip your head off, crap down your neck and use your tongue for lavatory paper if you make your Bond a secret agent. If you make him a BRITISH agent, he'll sew your head back on, just so that you'll experience the bitter taste of his putrid fecalia. Am I making myself clear?
Fanfic is illegal, to a point. Where that point lies, is the subject of a never-ending battle. You're using a copyrighted character, or a reasonable facsimile thereof, yes. But are you in fact copying a preexisting work? No. Unless you'd write a direct transcript of all the published Spiderman issues and say you did it, you wouldn't copy anything except ideas. Ideas are free. The more ideas you borrow from the copyrighted issues, the more illegal your work becomes. Therefore, originality is a good idea, story-wise as well as legal-wise. Scans of published comics, however, are illegal, no matter what you say. Unless you've drawn them yourself, they are theft of intellectual property.
Copyright, as it exists today, has long since mutated beyond its original intention. The copyright is suffocating innovation. How do you battle this? You break the law. A good law is a law that exists for a greater good. Hindering exploitation is a greater good. Filling up business' bank accounts is not a greater good. Information will always strive to be free. Trying to limit the exchange of information is like battling the tides in a way. The copyright laws of today are woefully inadequate in terms of digital information. Napster? Remember how the major record labels put that down, because it violated copyrights? You all heard of that, surely. Now here's the part they try not to tell you....After Napster shut down, record sales plummeted. That was not a coincidence. You stop piracy of any kind, and sales *will* go down. People aren't copying instead of buying. They are copying because they have a fleeing interest. They look at it, and decide for themselves whether or not they want to support the artist/author by buying their work. If they no longer have the option to peruse at their leisure, they'll no longer make those impulse buys of a CD they once heard. Ironically, the companies themselves are to blame for this. They promote the crap out of anything, pay radiostations to play their hottest singles to the extent that people can listen to the radio all day without hearing more than two-three dusins different songs. Listeners have to seek other ways of expanding their musical width if they're not content with the industrial standard. They go online, where they can find music undominated by teenage prostitutes with fake tits and even more fake smiles. I use the term prostitutes, and I do mean it. Selling your body is one thing, selling your body and soul is far worse. Spears, Aguilera and all of those glossy beachboys? They're all corporate whores. Neither companies nor solicitors think this way. Assfucked from here to eternity. They do what the industry tells them to, they say what the industry tells them to, they sing the songs they're told to sing. They're whores. Case closed. Ignore all top 10 songs. Cut to FanFic.
There's one very important proverb comic companies have forgotten when it comes to fanfic. "Imitation is the most sincere form of praise." The comic business is receding, so what do they do? Crack down on the people that are actually buying their comics. Corporate thinking. Don't ask me to explain it. But on the other hand, that would mean that the people that have paid for the idea, aren't allowed it? We've given marvel, dc and all the other companies our money....... In effect, wouldn't that mean we've paid for the right to use those chars in our fanfic? Think about that for a while.
Is FanFic legal?
If you're asking me, yes.
As I said, ideas are not copyrightable. No one can decide what other people should think. Stalin and Hitler discovered that the hard way. I'd use the expression 'Thought Police', but I'll bet almost anything the bastards have copyrighted that too. The laws are no longer by the people, for the people. They are by the business, for the consumers. That is the naked truth. That is why I'm going to log on the Internet right now, download a shitload of copyrighted information, i.e. MP3's, e-books, porn, what have you?. Then I've going to listen to the music, read the books and masturbate to the hard-core pornography. After I've done that, I'll go to a proper shop, and buy what I thought was worth the money. My bet's on the pornography. The Internet is giving you a chance to decide before you buy. The choice is yours, whether you abuse that privilege or not. I'm still going for the pornography.
-Erlend.
http://www.cisp.org/imp/february_2000/02_00gladney.htm
http://www.n-a-n-o.com/ipr/extro2/extro2mk.html
http://www.fplc.edu/tfield/copyNet.htm
http://www.law.gov.au/publications/digital.htm
http://www.benedict.com/
http://www.whatiscopyright.org/
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/98sep/copy.htm
http://www.geom.umn.edu/~scheftic/Talks/IPRW/origin.html
http://www.jps.net/dcm/copyright/
http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html
