Is monetizing a fanfic wrong?

Aaky

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This forum seems to agree that stealing graphical art for covers is bad, but how about writing a fanfic and then commercializing it?

Does that break the law? If so, does SH allow it?

Are fanfics plagiarism? why not? Could I take a popular novel from SH and then write my fan-fic about it and then charge people for it?

(If you wonder why this isn't a poll, this is because people in this forum complain about blank 1* and 5* star ratings, so if you don't post anything, you don't have a right to be heard :blob_shade: )
 

Fromage

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Define monetizing.

If you're just asking for a tip, it's allowed.

If you're asking people to pay just to read the fic, it's not okay.

If you're making a fanfic from a story in SH and want to monetize it, ask the author first.

Better safe than sorry.
 

jabathehut

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This forum seems to agree that stealing graphical art for covers is bad, but how about writing a fanfic and then commercializing it?

Does that break the law? If so, does SH allow it?

Are fanfics plagiarism? why not? Could I take a popular novel from SH and then write my fan-fic about it and then charge people for it?

(If you wonder why this isn't a poll, this is because people in this forum complain about blank 1* and 5* star ratings, so if you don't post anything, you don't have a right to be heard :blob_shade: )
No

What are you going to do, imply that intellectual "property" exists? I don't even believe in private "property". Next you'll tell me taxes are "real" and there are "consequences" for "evading" them lmao.

As long as it doesn't imply that is the original or canon I don't think there is any ethical concern though there are several legal ones and you may offend the author.
 

Assurbanipal_II

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This forum seems to agree that stealing graphical art for covers is bad, but how about writing a fanfic and then commercializing it?

Does that break the law? If so, does SH allow it?

Are fanfics plagiarism? why not? Could I take a popular novel from SH and then write my fan-fic about it and then charge people for it?

(If you wonder why this isn't a poll, this is because people in this forum complain about blank 1* and 5* star ratings, so if you don't post anything, you don't have a right to be heard :blob_shade: )
:blob_aww: Do you have anyone specific in mind?

PS, You seem to love the shade blob a lot. :blob_shade: I can imagine why.
 

BenJepheneT

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This forum seems to agree that stealing graphical art for covers is bad, but how about writing a fanfic and then commercializing it?
Graphical art and fanfics are ENTIRELY different things. Graphical art is done entirely from a person's skill, while fanfiction is writing from the author of the fanfic themselves. The apt comparison would be graphical EDITS and fanfics, but even then it's still not on the same ballpark. But in terms of MONOTIZING fanfiction tho

Commonly speaking, if you're just making fan-fiction, no one would particularly give a shit. Hell, as long as you have the permission from the author, you're golden.

Now making money OFF that work is a different thing entirely. If you want to be an asshole about it, you could just monetize it free-range regardless of the author's opinions. Lawfully speaking, you've done nothing wrong (unless they spitefully bring you to court), and there's no one to truly reprimand you for it except for the site owner, which would be a separate discussion in of itself entirely. Back on track here, those will be problems IF the author were to flame you for it. I don't think most would mind (unless you're making more money than them) and if they do, there's not much they can really do. So it pretty much comes down to your own ethics and principles. Do you give a shit if you're making money off an established creation? Would it relieve the guilt if you were to share a slight portion of it to the creator of the product itself?

The realm of fan-fiction is a messy one. There's only a loose set of rules out there to keep it from falling into plagiarism hell, but other than that it's mostly a free, open game. I won't have to point far to the mountains of naruto fics making moolah, nor do I have to search deep to find Nightcore YouTube accounts making money by simply pitching tones from the OG song. My personal view is that you should, at the bottom line, ask for permission from the author.

But speaking frankly, in the subject of money, if I were to be in your shoes, I'd just do it quietly. Maybe set up a backup site where I can post the fanfic in case hassle comes chasing from the main site itself. It's scummy, but it's money we're talking about. I don't have enough of that shit. If I can make it, I'm making it. But I'm too much of a pussy to do it anyway, so I'd probably avoid this kind of a situation if I can.
 

Aaky

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Define monetizing.

If you're just asking for a tip, it's allowed.

If you're asking people to pay just to read the fic, it's not okay.

If you're making a fanfic from a story in SH and want to monetize it, ask the author first.

Better safe than sorry.
So I can steal a cover, and is fine as long as I am only asking for a tip? (I.e patreon)
 

NotaNuffian

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So I can steal a cover, and is fine as long as I am only asking for a tip? (I.e patreon)
And get sweared by the original artist.

Let's be honest, we don't have SS for mods, so GGWP.
 
D

Deleted member 29316

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Profitting from someone else's copyrighted work is illegal.

However, according to Fair Use doctrine, if the fanfiction is intended to promote and educate about the original author's work, and/or the fanfiction has no effect on the market value of the said work, the fanfiction author is not held liable.

Plus, the original purpose of copyright is to encourage sharing of ideas and cultural advancement. Fair use, on the other hand, is created to counteract and limit copyright.
 
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Omnifarious

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...
Just this part....
the original purpose of copyright is to encourage sharing of ideas and cultural advancement.

I believe the earliest copyright law, the Statue of Anne was to take the monopoly away from publishing houses / Newspaper companies and place the right in the hands of the creators/ authors.

The Statute replaced the monopoly enjoyed by the Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers (Stationer's Company) granted in 1557 during the reign of Mary I which, after several renewals, expired in 1695. Under this regime, company members would buy manuscripts from authors but once purchased, would have a perpetual monopoly on the printing of the work. Authors themselves were excluded from membership in the company and could not therefore legally self-publish, nor were they given royalties for books that sold well. The statute of Anne vested authors rather than printers with the monopoly on the reproduction of their works


So the original purpose of the copyright was about the money~ money~ money~, (and ownership rights) and it still kinda is.
 

LostLibrarian

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According to the law it's illegal.

But due to the fact that most of these products are aimed at fictions owned by major publishers, they are "allowed for now" as they help to grow the fandom of the story. Same with e.g. your typical Let's Plays on youtube. Those aren't legal, but most publishers allow them as they advertise their games better than some bad CGI trailer...

It's the same with anything. No punishment without plaintiff...

So by the law it's just as illegal as using stolen covers, but as most of them aren't aimed single artist but bigger companies, more people are willing to excuse it on their moral compass. It's the same difference people have between stealing from an old lady or pirating a video game from a multi billion dollar company. Both are just as wrong, but one is often excused due to the proportions...

However, according to Fair Use doctrine, if the fanfiction is intended to promote and educate about the original author's work, and/or the fanfiction has no effect on the market value of the said work, the fanfiction author is not held liable.
Your chances for Fair Use grow really slim if you bring money in the equation.
Especially as the majority of fanfictions aren't about "educating" but rather "piggybacking" on others success...
 

OneSixSeven

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You mean by paywalling them? It is wrong if it's a fanfic.

Define monetizing.

If you're just asking for a tip, it's allowed.

If you're asking people to pay just to read the fic, it's not okay.

If you're making a fanfic from a story in SH and want to monetize it, ask the author first.

Better safe than sorry.
(2)
 

Tessa_Renalds

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I would steer on the side of caution when talking about monetizing a fan fiction or something that is originally someone else’s idea. Nintendo actually sued a person for having their username Pokémon related, and that user lost; they had to give all the money they earned using the username back to the company.
 

LostLibrarian

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I would steer on the side of caution when talking about monetizing a fan fiction or something that is originally someone else’s idea. Nintendo actually sued a person for having their username Pokémon related, and that user lost; they had to give all the money they earned using the username back to the company.
Though in that case it really is the user's fault. She sold merchandise with images of the actual licensed Pokemon on it and it came to light because she wanted to trademark her username Pokeprincxss to give herself "Pokemon-related rights".

Which was both copyright and trademark infringement of a person with 1.9 million followers. It's really close to going into a bookstore, copying the story, and selling your own hardcovers on ebay :D

(just wanted to add that, because Nintendo often is a real shitty company even if they are (according to the law) allowed to act that way. But in this case Nintendo would have been stupid to not act.)
 

yansusustories

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Are fanfics plagiarism? why not?
I think you might be throwing plagiarism and copyright infringement into the same pot here but they're really two different things. I think fanfics would be an infringement of copyright but they're not plagiarism.
Plagiarism requires actually copying from the original creation. That means parts of the text (in this case) or maybe even the whole text are taken and you slap your name on it (basically pretending you wrote all of that while you didn't or at least not completely). There is also the possibility of structural plagiarisation (not quite sure if that's the right term in English) where you copy the exact structure of a creative work but basically rephrase everything.
That is not what a fanfiction is. Fanfictions take indeed something from the original creation (e.g. characters or places - which is where the infringement of the copyright takes place) but there is usually no 1:1 copying happening because the rest of the story will come from the fan's imagination and be their own wording so it doesn't qualify as plagiarism.
At the very least, this is how things are in my country. It might be different in other places or under international law.
 

pyrak

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In a nutshell? Yes, the original content is someone else's intellectual property.

Does that stop people? Evidently not.

I personally am not interested in fanfics aside from the occasional Star Wars one (and even then they're pretty strictly OC and away from anything that's close to main plot stuff, reading a couple good Sith based ones right now).

It's like stealing donuts from a donut shop, then adding a few extra sprinkles on top and then finally selling the donuts as your own variant of their donut.
 

minacia

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Well, there's three ways to consider it: (1) Is it illegal? (2) Is it morally wrong? (3) Is it practically inadvisable?


Is it illegal?
Under United States law, yes, it's copyright infringement. If you wrote a book set in the Star Wars Universe and published it on Amazon, you could be sued and the court would be expected to side with Disney. You could try to argue fair use (or that it is sufficiently transformative), but in this situation the argument isn't likely to hold in court.


Is it morally wrong?
When considering morality, I tend to pretend laws don't exist and address how I feel about things.

Disney is a multi-million dollar company and I tend to hold less sympathy for them. For instance, how do people feel about pharmaceutical companies jacking up prices on essential medications because they own the patent that allows them to be the exclusive manufacturer (monopoly) of a drug? In both cases, we are talking about intellectual property.

I personally tend to believe that copyright/patents defend the interests of individual owners at the expense of the public good.

For instance, generic medications are good for the public. We want patents on important medications to expire because patents are a legal monopoly, and we want knockoff products to be brought to market as soon as possible. Likewise, open source code is good for the public and stimulates a community of programmers and software developers (i.e. unix systems). I tend to believe that derivative things like AMVs are art and that allowing these things facilitates the creation of more art (in a public good sense). It would be very painful if the entire utaite/music cover community was slammed with copyright claims, and to some extent I feel like it's better for artists to accept that producing art means that there will be derivatives that steal your idea without necessarily giving back a cent. In many circumstances, the Internet wouldn't be the way it was if users were magically prevented from uploading images that they don't own the copyright for to reddit/pinterest/tumblr (note: this is also illegal), and I think we need to appreciate that the Internet is the Internet that we know and love because all of these things.

There are good things and bad things about copyright.

I'm sympathetic to musicians, artists, and authors who are struggling to eat food because of widespread copyright infringement. It is necessary to defend their interests.

However, when a copyright expires (14 years for patents and 70 years for published work), generally speaking this is good for the public.


Is it practically inadvisable?
It depends on the amount of money you made (or lost for the original owner). It costs money for the plaintiff to bring you to court, and generally speaking they won't sue you unless they believe they can gain more money from suing you than leaving you alone.

For instance, if you made $10 off of Star Wars, it will cost Disney more money to bring you to court than any amount of money they can extract from you. If you made 10 million dollars off of Disney intellectual property, it's probably likely that Disney might be interested in that cash.

Note that these considerations also apply for damages. For instance, if you distribute a music video for free, the music producer could argue that you caused them to lose money (since users could listen to their song on your music video without paying), and they could calculate the projected damages/losses based on their regular licensing/royalty rates and bring that number to court.

If your fanfiction / copyright infringement is based off of an anonymous free work you found on ScribbleHub, courts are unlikely to care if there is no money involved. There is actually nothing to sue and no case, and it's not very compelling for the original artist to say "my pride was hurt" but I didn't lose any money.

In other words, the smaller things get, the less that the legal system tends to care.

Content platforms tend to respond liberally to DMCA complaints though, so they often do remove on request anyway.
 

dvelasquez

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This forum seems to agree that stealing graphical art for covers is bad, but how about writing a fanfic and then commercializing it?
Well, I just wanted to add something, and that is that stealing graphical art for covers is one thing, writing fanfic is another thing. In the first case, you're taking the thing as it is, and at much, adding your title, while writing fanfic is basically taking a history/character/anything as a base and do your own story with it. Of course, I'm not saying it is good to monetize on it, but it's still a different thing. You're not posting a story as it is, you're modifying it in completely different ways. Just wanted to clarify that.
 
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