George R R Martin talks about why he's against fan fiction

[Moroni Granja]

Meri wrote: "Someone earlier mentioned music copyright and I just wanted to clarify: The model you are referring to was common until the late 1990's and is still not unheard of for *major labels*. The copyright..."

If common sense was as common as the name implies we would need a lot less laws (and lawyers).

[Moroni Granja]

He's not comparing George R.R. Martin to a Nazi. He is using hyperbole to make the point that even if you don't like a person, you can still like his work.

[Kevin]

Dude, no one was compared to Nazis.

Saying that A relates to B as C relates to D doesn't in any way mean you equate A to C.

His point was exactly what Moroni described and nothing more. You're reading things that aren't there.

[Emy]

Just another thought to throw into the mix: Is it the ideas or the writing that makes a book?

I ask because I can think of books like Frankenstein, where the premise sounds awesome, and even plot summaries are great, yet the book itself is (to me at least) dross.

Another take on this, using an example from another genre. Four well known historical romance authors were given the same plot premise, then left to write short stories which were published together in an anthology. It was interesting to see how different the four stories were...

I don't know what I think about an author attempting to stop people from writing in their world, or about their characters, but I suspect it is akin to parents trying to stop people from doing things with little Johnny. You can give little Johnny all the information and moral upbringing you like, but once he's big enough to go out into the world alone (read the book is published), then he sinks or swims on his own merits, and who he associates with is up to him, not Mummy or Daddy... Analogy sucks, but I can't think of anything better at the moment! :P

I DO believe that you shouldn't be able to sue someone for 'stealing ideas'. The IP of the actual WORK is unassailable, to me, but the ideas are not because for me it is about how you deal with it and the quality of the writing, rather than the ideas themselves. If I 'gave' an author an idea, however so, I'd be dead chuffed if I got a 'thank you' in the acknowledgement, but if I didn't, I'd probably assume that they got the idea independently.

There is some very good fanfiction, and there is some that is so dire it's hysterical. The only fan fic I would honestly say I have a problem with is that which takes a pre-existing character and changes them in ways that don't match the character the author wrote. Why? Because I get confused and puzzled - this isn't the character I know! However if they wrote a new character in that world, or a minor/undeveloped one, then I'd be able to just accept it as plausible... HOWEVER, that is a personal view, not one I'd like to see enshrined in law!

[Trike]

I'm more of George Lucas' mindset about this: do whatever you want with the source material, just don't make money off of it. Have fun in the playground but don't charge admission.

One can make a convincing argument that fan fiction (in the form of both writing and film making) helped keep Star Wars alive and viable during the long drought between movies and fueled the creation of the Expanded Universe.

Going the other route can often do damage to your fanbase. Look at what happened to Paramount when they tried to shut down all the Star Trek fansites back in the 90s. There was a huge backlash against the studio and it was even felt at the cons when attendance dropped noticeably. It had a chilling effect on the entire franchise.

Marvel and DC have taken a compromise approach, where they allow artists to sell drawings of their characters, but they disallow anyone using the characters in comics. Sort of a benign, look-the-other-way gray market that they let happen because they know it garners them far more goodwill than any small amount of money they might make on cracking down on these people.

You may not like what people are doing with your creations, but where's the harm? It's not like they're stealing your lunch money. Besides, you never know what cool thing might spring from someone playing in your universe and then taking it in another direction, using the original fan fic as a springboard.

Like, you know, Wild Cards.

[Doc]

Fan Fic isn't harmless. I think it was the Thieves World series where the author welcomed fan fic, and then got sued by a fan for using a similar theme in an official book. The end result was that the author lost rights to their own world! If you've worked hard to build a setting, you don't want it become a playground for everyone else but you.

Doc

[Trike]

Darren wrote: "The argument is not only not convincing, it's based on a false premise. There has never been any sort of lack of Star Wars material, licenced EU or consumables. Calling the space between Jedi and Phantom a "long drought" makes me wonder if you lived through that period at all. I grew up while they were still producing the movies, and there were action figures, children's books, puppets, rc droids, alarm clocks, YA novels, arcade and console games... "

Actually, that's incorrect.

The original comics stopped in 1986. Except for miniseries and one-shots from 1991 to 1995, they did not resume as regular series again until 1998, nearly 13 years later. No matter how you count it, there were no comics at all between 1986 and 1991, and between 1991 and 1998 there were fewer than 50 issues produced. The last of the 1980s books were tied into the cartoon series Droids and Ewoks, which likewise were done by 1986.

After the 1983 Return of the Jedi novelization and Lando Calrissian series, there were no more books published until the Timothy Zahn book in 1991, an eight-year absence. One of the reasons they went ahead with those books was because they saw so many fans writing their own fiction about what happened next and who Boba Fett really was.

Some toys were made, but they were few and far between. Consequently, Star Wars toys from the late 80s and early 90s command the highest prices on the collector market due to their rarity. There are no action figures from 1985 to 1995 at all, because demand stopped and Kenner quit making them and the company was later sold. A few more were made by Hasbro in 1998 -- a date you've seen a lot now, which is a year after the release of the movie "Special Editions" happened, and interest in Star Wars picked back up.

[Trike]

Doc wrote: "Fan Fic isn't harmless. I think it was the Thieves World series where the author welcomed fan fic, and then got sued by a fan for using a similar theme in an official book. The end result was that ..."

I believe you're thinking of the Darkover fan fiction that Marion Zimmer Bradley actually *used* in her novels. The writer wanted a couple hundred bucks and Bradley's lawyer sent a letter threatening a lawsuit. The end.

That's why you don't read fanfic if you're an author. That way you can say truthfully you came up with the idea on your own. Either that or tell people -- the way Lucas has -- that you simply can't sell it and that he owns everything.

I just think it's ridiculously ironic that people like GRR Martin and Mercedes Lackey come down so hard on fan fiction when they've both published books that essentially consist of *their* fan fiction. Martin with his Wild Cards series and Lackey with her recent books based on the City of Heroes MMO. (R.I.P. CoH.)