Textual poaching...

[fajrdrako]

Just read an interesting essay about fanfic and professional authors by ajhalluk:"We built spaceships for our Barbie dolls". Of couse, it's preaching to the converted where I am concerned; I think copyright laws are archaic and should be much looser. I don't think coyright should extend beyond a person's death, for example, though everyone seems to take it for granted that this should be the case.

There are other aspects besides the financial and the creative. I could imagine that I'd be horrified as an author if some fan took one of my beloved characters and did something ghastly with him, but so what? No one forces anyone to read a story. The original author's characters remain pristine in her mind and her works.

Comments

[widget-alley.livejournal.com]

It is my dream that, someday, I will write a book. And that book will spawn much slash fanfiction, and much of the crushing on the antihero it will (invariably) have. And I will be a happy, happy Widget, and possibly be transported back to my teenage years, because, let's face it, that's what my teenage years appear to consist of.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Ooh - lovely, lovely icon. I swoon.

I agree with everything you said. Me too. (Tho' slash didn't exist when I was a teen; I wish it had.)

[widget-alley.livejournal.com]

Isn't that icon fabulous? vervassal made it and it makes me drool every time.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

She's brilliant. It's wonderful.

[widget-alley.livejournal.com]

I wonder whose hands they are.

(I had a friend, back in gradeschool, who had Lymond hands. Seriously amazing, gorgeous, pale, oval-nailed artist's hands, with incredibly long, tapering fingers. They were very strong, too, and if he closed his fists the tendons stood out against the back of his hands like an anatomy study. I didn't care for the boy all that much, but ye gods, was I in love with his hands.)

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Hands are remarkable things. My mental image of Lymond's hands is a very distinct one - as it should be. The hands are so much part of him. Yes, this icon is perfectly conceived!

[teenygozer.livejournal.com]

I believe the "author's death plus fifty years" thing was in order to provide $$ to the widows & kiddies of the author. But it's just getting nuts, with corporations tossing (literally) a couple of thousand bucks at a few polititians to have the date extended to a point where things never seem to go into public domain.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I believe the "author's death plus fifty years" thing was in order to provide $$ to the widows & kiddies of the author.

Yes. I think that is archaic.

Corporations will always be as greedy as the laws allow them to be. Except for their profit, I don't see the point. Certainly creativity doesn't prosper by it.