Fan Created Works

Fan Fiction and other Fan Created Works

We’ve probably all heard the term “fan-fiction”, or “fan fic” and most of us know exactly what the term means: Fiction written by the admirers of a copyrighted intellectual property.

This differs from authorized or licensed works based on an intellectual property, but not written by the original author. For example, Star Wars has spawned hundreds of books written by authors besides George Lucas, and indeed, of the first three movies in the series, only the first one was actually written and directed by Lucas, while Lucas only conceived and produced the second and third movies.

What a lot of people don’t know is that fan fiction is a term that’s actually been around since before the 1960’s. Today, we use the term to refer to fiction created by fans of a work, using characters from the original work, but not authorized by the original author. These works are easily published through the internet, and hence, the term fan fiction came to mean what we know it to mean today.

Decades ago, however, fan fiction simply referred to any work of fiction in a science fiction magazine that was written and submitted by a member of its general readership. This differentiated the fan-written fiction from the professionally written fiction. Professional writers will submit stories and receive a fee or some other form of payment, where fan fiction writers only wish to be published and read.

It’s interesting to note that many professional artists and writers got their start in derivative fan created works. For example, the Japanese comic book “Kinnikuman” focused on an intergalactic pro-wrestler/superhero, and in each issue, he would fight a new badguy. These badguys were largely designed by the fans. Fans would submit character drawings and, if the author liked the design well enough, the character could be used in the context of the next issue. The character of “Pandaman” was submitted by a young Eiichiro Oda, who would go on to create his own phenomenally successful pirate themed adventure comic “One Piece”.

How is this all relevant to fan fiction and copyright law?

Well, what we’ve mentioned above pretty much falls under licensed, legal derivative works. Many authors such as J.K. Rowling, of the Harry Potter books, are completely okay with fan fiction. However, fan fiction in general does count as copyright infringement, and if an author seeks to prevent the publishing of fan fiction based on their work, they are, more often than not, successful at doing so. For example, Anne Rice has always fought against fan fiction. It is kind of amusing to note that people persist in writing fan fiction based on her works and releasing them online, anyways, but if she ever finds every piece of fan fiction online that uses her characters, she is within her legal rights to demand that it be taken down.

If you’d like to write fan fiction, really, the vast majority of authors don’t really have a problem with it. If you don’t really want to do anything but write stories about Chewbacca and Han Solo and put them online for free, there really should be no problem. Unless an author really carries a grudge against fan fiction, most of it, to put it bluntly, kind of flies under the radar. It’s just not really that big of a deal for most authors.

On the other hand, if you begin charging money for fan fiction, that could put you in some hot water, making you liable for charges of plagiarism and intellectual theft. There’s also some potential of seeing legal action if you produce fan fiction that the original author really does not like. For example, in the early 1980’s, various Star Wars fan-operated magazines were issued cease and desist letters from LucasFilm, with regards to publishing pornographic fan fiction. Although honestly, even that doesn’t bother most authors.

If you’d really like to make sure you’re not going to get any nasty letters from lawyers, it may be wise to do some quick research on your favourite author’s opinion on fan fiction. Many artists even release works specifically in hopes of seeing fan-creations. For example, rapper Jay-Z released a vocals-only version of his Black Album, so that fans could write their own beats and create original remixes. Other artists have even gone on to really enjoy derivative works created by their fans.

If you do receive a cease and desist letter, then really, there isn’t much to worry about as long as you remove your work from the internet. There really haven’t been any incidents where a fan fiction author landed in jail or received harsh fines and so on. Just know that the line you don’t cross is in asking for money. Whatever the original author’s opinion on fan fiction, selling fan created works is where you go from being a fan, to being an unauthorized distributor.