#and I think the vast majority of creatives will not sue people selling fanfics if their work

[aro-aceattorney]

Can I make a confession. I do not get the paranoia around selling bound fanfic

#like I think it is probably messy legally speaking #but also like #so is fanart? #and uhhh idk if you’ve noticed #but people buy and sell a LOT of fanart lmao #and it’s accepted #I don’t get why fanfic is different #like. both are probably breaking copyright law #but like. nobody really cares that much #and I think the vast majority of creatives will not sue people selling fanfics if their work #idk it’s just a weird thing to me #the huge moral panic over it #maybe there’s a layer to this I don’t get?? #but uhhhh #idk man

[roxilalonde]

i think the reason a lot of writers came down hard on people writing fanfiction in the early days of like. wattpad and livejournal is that nobody knew where it was going, so a lot of people got worried that the natural conclusion was going to be people selling fanfic. and since most authors don’t have the means to litigate every fanfic author writing derivatives of their work, even if copyright law was on the author’s side, they would still be pretty squarely fucked because point blank they couldn’t sue in every instance of copyright infringement. granted, exactly how much money authors would be losing to fanfic writers in this situation debatable, since the vast majority of fanfic requires knowledge of the original text to make any kind of sense. 

regardless, i think the decline of the “anne rice model” regarding fanfic can be attributed to two things: a) sites like AO3 lawyered up and started defending it as work licensed under creative commons, making it a lot harder to intimidate teenagers by sending them a long email in legalese, and b) people have gradually realized that fanfic not any kind of danger to authors or their copyright, so it’s a lot easier to let it slide, even if its relationship with copyright law is still frosty at best.

#also i have Big Fucking Problems with how anne rice handled it specifically as an individual #i.e. sending threats of multi-thousand dollar lawsuits to fifteen year olds shipping louis and lestat on livejournal #literal damn c&d notices. it's unreasonable and you KNOW it was only for the intimidation factor #because she wanted them to get so scared they told all their friends about it and chased them off #it's just. every time i see one of those 'disclaimer! i don't own these characters! i'm not making any money off of this at all!!' notes #all i see is a kid absolutely fucking terrified of getting sued for wanting to write about their favorite characters and it sucks