Concerning Fanfiction

[francescacoppa.livejournal.com]

Mercedes Lackey has announced the following on her blog:

News: Concerning Fanfiction:

As you folks already know, my agent, Russel Galen, has in the past been opposed to fanfiction. However, he is also Cory Doctorow's agent now, and Cory is a persuasive little gnome.

As a result of this, I am happy to announce that we are officially permitting fanfiction to be licensed as derivative fiction under the Creative Commons umbrella...

Thanks, Cory, for helping Mercedes and her agent recognize that fans' reaction to works can (and already do!) legitimately include creative responses. We don't think we need her permission, but we're always happy to have her blessing--and as fans of hers, we're happy that she's happy! :)

Mirrored from an original post on the OTW Blog.

Comments

[transcendancing.livejournal.com]

YAY!!! I'm so delighted by this in so many ways!!!

Yay for getting a real play into the stranglehold of copyright and ideas and creativity!!!!

[alessandriana.livejournal.com]

*goes to the window to check for airborne swine*

...that is to say, awesome!

[lanning.livejournal.com]

*blinks* Wow. I never thought I'd see that particular worm turn. Good news!

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

Hooray!

Now does anyone know exactly how to format the "derivative works" and "Creative Commons" stuff so it can appear with the story? Because I haven't got a clue.

[francescacoppa.livejournal.com]

Honestly, it doesn't really work that way; she doesn't really seem to understand cc licenses. But ML and her people seem to realize that they are hardly being harmed by noncommercial fanworks, so I'd say you should just write and post your story. (Hopefully to the AO3!)

[gwendolen.livejournal.com]

Hm, as far as I remember Misty has never been against fanfic considering that she started out by writing fanfiction based on Witchworld and Darkover and some of her first published works where Darkover-short-stories.

When I was involved with the Valdemar-fandom (years and years ago) stories using the setting of her worlds were okay, but stories using her characters weren't, same as with Darkover. The whole come-play-in-my sandbox-ting, but do not play with my dolls. Later she added some rights release-from potential writers had to sign for each story but by then I was already on my way out and didn't pay too much attention.

The whole copyright question was always an issue, especially after all the trouble MZB got into because of fanfiction. Nice to see that her agent is finally seeing the light. *g*

[alessandriana.livejournal.com]

According to Wikipedia:

"Despite getting her own start as a fanfic author, she and her agent strongly forbade fanfiction based on her own books for many years, whether distributed offline or online. After some time, offline fanfic was permitted, but only if the author got a release form from Mercedes Lackey that said the author acknowledged that they were using characters that belong to Mercedes Lackey and that the author's work essentially became Mercedes Lackey's property - "infringing on my right to make a living from my own imagination"."

And there's also a Q&A on her site that says: "We don't allow online fanfiction or online games, MUDs, MUCKs or MUSHs; anything else is fine. "

So it sounds like she originally was against it pretty strongly, but has gradually been getting more lenient over the years.

[gwendolen.livejournal.com]

That's really weird, because in the early 90s when I was involved with the fandom and part of Queen's Own (the official, Misty-approved fanclub) some of the requirements to create a Persona (a Herald or Healer or other characters) included ,next to a character-sheet, either some art-work or fanfiction or volunteer-work or craft involving the Persona (i.e. the character one was creating). People also did zines that were advertised in the monthly newsletter.

I think the requirement of the release-form came up in 93 or 94 after the whole MZB/fanfic-thing and was one of the reasons why I stopped being interested in writing Valdemar-fanfic. Discovering K/S was another one *g*.

Of course back then everything was done via snail-mail and offline, so maybe she really differentiates very strongly between online and offline fanfiction?

It's really a pity that I no longer have all that material from back then but I think I threw it all away a few years ago.

[badkarma-one.livejournal.com]

That's exactly how I remember it, Gwendolen. Anne McCaffrey had the same setup for her Pern fan clubs.

[gwendolen.livejournal.com]

I just looked it up and the fanclub still exists and even has a newsletter-archive. Early 90s: "SUPPORT OUR ZINES!" With lots of advertising for smallish zines based on Valdemar/Velgarath.

Maybe I should go and update the Wikipedia-entry? ;-)

[alessandriana.livejournal.com]

Huh, interesting. I was never involved in the fandom; by the time I discovered fanfic (mid-to-late 90's, I guess), the general consensus seemed to be that Lackey really didn't like fanfic except in some very specific cases (i.e., only if you contacted her and got a release-- way too much work, IMHO!), so I never even bothered to look for it. Sounds like whoever wrote the WIkipedia article may have heard the same things I did?

But on the other hand, the answer on her FAQ seems pretty clear cut, so I dunno. Maybe you're right, and she really does differentiate between online/offline fic pretty strongly.

It'd be interesting to hear from someone who's been actively involved in the fandom more recently...

[airawyn.livejournal.com]

From what I've seen, she's been pro-fanfic personally but anti-fanfic officially, for fear of legal troubles. She's one of Marion Zimmer Bradley's proteges, so it's not surprising she was cautious on the topic.

[shinetheway.livejournal.com]

[giggles]

This tickles me greatly. My only experience with authors and fanfic was probably ten years ago when an author [cough] Lynn Flewelling actually JOINED the email listserve I was running, that had "fanfic" in the actual name of the list, and posted about how happy she was to be there. Then she freaked out when someone me actually, you know, posted a story. She sent a C&D and basically killed the list.

Between this and Edgar Wright writing Hot Fuzz slash on Twitter, I think maybe TPTB are finally, finally getting it.

[quiet000001.livejournal.com]

That was YOUR list? I remember that! (And always curse the lack of fiction for that series - I mean, it was so ripe for it! And some of it was so GOOD.)

[badkarma-one.livejournal.com]

What part of the word 'fanfic' didn't she get?

[kerravonsen]

I'm not a fan of her works, but I shall do a happy dance anyway.