Forum: Story Ideas

I, too, have wished for more female-narrator coming-of-age and especially do-over stories. I've even contemplated a couple concepts for them, though it would require more commitment than I'd be willing to give.

I know that others have done it more frequently, but asking a male author to write not just a quick female centric story but an epic might be asking a bit much. A better question to ask is: why can't we attact minority authors (women, blacks, Hispanics, Indians, etc.) to post stories to SOL.

We've gotten a few female authors, though they either tend to write shorter stories, churn out the same male-centric plots everyone else does, or don't stick around for long.

I wrote one story with a strong female lead, A House in Disarray, because it fit the story, and I think I did a decent job of it, but it was only had 18 chapters.

Despite your wordiness, platitudes, rationales, justifications, and everything else - violating someone's copyright is stealing.

It doesn't matter if it is done once or a million times - it is stealing.

The thief may not make a profit, but it is still stealing.

Nope. Opinion only. You may think so, but if courts say otherwise, then so be it.

Let's put it this way, Mr. Legal Expert who's never visited a court room or ever written anything. If you steal my story ideas by writing a sequel to one of my books, I will sue you, and you can argue with the judge whether you're freewheeling ideas about FF being 'legitimate' hold any weight in a court of law!

You're arguing a losing case here, because you've got NOactual evidence to back it up.

But, back to your original point, there's nothing wrong with requesting more women to write do-over Coming of Age stories, but please, don't encourage anyone to steal someone else's ideas or premises in doing so. Either create an original work of art, or go get a real job doing something else. You wouldn't walk into someone business place, sit down at an empty desk and expect to be paid, so why do you think you can 'borrow' an author's entire universe and get away with not having put in the grunt work which made it successful in the first place?

I think those cases show a significant degree of arbitrariness in their judgements, in most cases favouring the side with more money.

The author's second point is questionable to say the least. According to the wording of the legal judgement, Dan Brown won his case to a large extent because the work he plagiarised was (falsely) presented as non-fiction. So if you're an impoverished brilliant author, don't use the 'True Story' tag for your SOL masterpieces ;)

AJ

The author's second point is questionable to say the least.

You're right, I was 180 degrees wrong on that. If the work Dan Brown plagiarised had been classed as fiction, the appeal against him may well have succeeded. That reinforces the opinion that the more fantastical the work, the less likely a copycat can get away with the 'fair use' argument.

As for the individual court decisions, they're personal interpretations of the law. Other judges and courts might well have come to different decisions because the law is cased in subjective terminology. The more money you have, the better the justice you can buy :(

AJ

Although the book was positioned as non-fiction, the subject matter had Jesus having a family with Mary Magdalene. That's about as factual as cold fusion.

AJ

Although the book was positioned as non-fiction, the subject matter had Jesus having a family with Mary Magdalene.

If you accept what is said in the relevant parts of the New Testament part of the Bible the woman known as Mary Magdalene would have had to have been the wife of the person known as Jesus of Nazareth because only the women of a man's immediate family were allowed to be involved in preparing the body for burial. Since she wasn't his sister or his mother, that means she had to be his wife. Also, she was traveling with him, and the society at that time meant she had to be either his sister, mother, servant, or wife and the way his mother treated her made it clear she was his wife.

Mind you, the Roman Catholic Church, and many of the other mainstream churches have a major issue with acknowledging that issue. But then, they also try to paint Jesus as being very poor when he came from the upper class of that area and the families of both of his parents were rich. It's because he came from a powerful family that he was seen as a danger to the people in power.

I guess that's more credible than the average politician's autobiography ;)

AJ

I guess that's more credible than the average politician's autobiography ;)

Part of the problem with reading any record or report from another time or culture is understanding the culture of that time and place and what they see as 'known knowledge' that they expect everyone to 'just know.' For example: If I set a story in the USA of today and say a person got in a car and drove down the road everyone will expect the person to be in the driver's seat on the left hand side of the car. This is expected and assumed. So, if they get into an imported right-hand drive vehicle I have to specially mention that fact as it's against the known knowledge.

The laws and rules on burial preparations at the time of Jesus was known knowledge to the people who wrote the documents, but it wasn't known or understood by people in Europe some hundreds of years later. There's a lot of things like that in the Bible and other ancient works. Another classic from the Bible is when the accounts of Jesus' ministry start he's referred to as a Teacher and later when he returns to Jerusalem he's called Rabbi. Two important things needed to be elevated to being a Rabbi over being a teacher are the recognition by the relevant church authorities and another for that time was you had to be married.

What I love is how the Roman Catholic Church push the concept of Jesus being the son of a poor carpenter, yet that trade was highly respected and well paid (without going into he may have been even hire as the actual term used in the original texts covers a wide range of employments) and he was a recognized member as a direct descendant in the House of King David. That's kind of like saying Prince William is a poor unknown nothing in the English royal family.

Jesus being the son of a poor carpenter

'Craftsman' is probably a better translation of tektōn, though opinions on this vary. But your other point remains - this was a position which allowed the individual to earn much better wages than a day-laborer or farmhand.

'Craftsman' is probably a better translation of tektōn, though opinions on this vary. But your other point remains - this was a position which allowed the individual to earn much better wages than a day-laborer or farmhand.

The translations I've seen vary with everything from technician to craftsman and can include a huge range of highly skilled work. However, the family was rich enough that not only could they afford a donkey and to move about as they wished, they were rich enough they had to go to the family main residence for the census, something only the very upper levels did as the others couldn't afford the time off work.

The individual court decisions are appellate court decisions and they are binding on lower courts.

I don't see how they can be binding on future cases when the specifics of the alleged copying are always different.

AJ

In point of fact, US courts have considered many of the issues surrounding fan fiction

Another point to keep in mind is not every story comes directly under US copyright laws. I'm Australian and write here in Australia, thus everything I write comes under Australian copyright laws, also, because the first place I publish now is in Canada a good case can be made before the Canadian courts that they come under the Canadian copyright laws due to that being the first place of publication. The last is true of all of the SoL authors who publish a work at SoL before publishing anywhere else.

It does if you want to bring suit in US courts. The US courts will almost certainly accept the validity of a foreign copyright, but beyond the issue of whether or not a given work is under copyright, they will not (tecnically, they can't) apply foreign law to a dispute being adjudicated in US courts.

The point of my post was my copyright protection is given as per the Australian laws, and possibly the Canadian laws not the USA laws.

The cross country treaties and agreements providing protection kick in to give me the same protections in the USA, UK, EU, etc. Only a few countries like China and Korea are outside of those agreements.

Under the various International treaties and laws that apply to copyright any document with a copyright from another country covered by any of the treaties have full copyright protection under the US laws. One of the things the US Dept of State was doing during the Obama years was pushing full reciprocal copyright protections as part of all of their Trade Agreements to protect the film and music industry in the USA from what they called piracy operations. Thus my Australian copyright, which is free, has the same full protections in the USA as a US author pays for in the USA, and the reverse is true here.

I'm not convinced all fanfic is theft, and again, courts seem to verify this. After all, we're told there are only seven different stories anyway. Everything is just a variation of one of these. There would be very little of the arts otherwise. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, after all. Blatant ripoffs is a whole other issue. It just seems you have a different view of ripoffs. Again, a matter of degree.

Simply put, most people consider Fan Fiction to be outright theft of another's original creation by those incapable of coming up with anything original of their own. However, that's typically between the two authors. If the original authors allows it, then it's OK, although there have been abundant instances where an author allows fan fiction, the FF author tries to 'guess' what the original authors next book is about, and thereby ruins the party for everyone as the author, having lost their next paycheck with their publisher, pulls the plug on everyone!

If you want to write a Fan Fiction piece, it's best to ask first whether it's generally 'allowable'. If it is, try not to step on the original authors toes, and credit them in your work, rather than trying to claim their work as your own.

Does that mean nobody else's work can be fair and balanced?

Trademarks and copyrights are very different things.

So, Fox News called itself "Fair and Balanced" and trademarked that phrase. Does that mean nobody else's work can be fair and balanced?

Trademark is a very different thing to copyright, and many trademarks like that are often not upheld in court, while most are limited to the industry they're in. Like registered business name the trademarks are usually restricted to their business field and only restrict those within the same business. Mind you trademarked business names are another issue due to the complexity with the registered business name laws adding to the situation.

If I understand what you mean, yes. Ernest expressed my opinion very well.

Authors cannot copyright general story realms, concepts, and ideas such as: murder mystery, magic, fiction, and others.

However, they can copyright a specific story set in those realms. They can also copyright specific story worlds and concepts that they create, such as: Hogwarts, Star Trek, the Damsels in Distress Universe, The Swarm Cycle Universe, etc.

Would you agree with "A major limitation on copyright is that copyright protects only the original expression of ideas, and not the underlying ideas themselves."?

They own the specifics, but not the general concepts. Thus no one 'owns' do-overs or Coming of Age stories, but several people hold copyrights to the mentioned works the original poster is suggesting someone else steal!

The person who hold the original copyright on a story owns the world created by the story and the characters created in the story.

Technically, that's not true. Copyright only protects the words on a page, not the story ideas. However, this remains a largely gray area, as an author can seriously injure their reputation if readers suspect they based their story on someone's else's work—especially if they don't credit them and then attempt to profit from the previous authors name-recognition.

While fan fiction authors may borrow (I won't call it theft as theft implies depriving the original owner from access/use/benefit of the stolen which doesn't happen when writing fan fiction) from the original author, their contribution to the universe make the universe richer, thus enhancing (well most times) the original author's work.

John, there's no reason why they can't write a story of their own without taking the background of another author. Regardless of how you feel about it, the fan fiction authors are frequently distorting and altering the world and environment of the world without the approval of the original author. Thus they are stealing from the original author. there have even been cases where the fan fiction writers have entered into areas the original author was writing and so upset them the original authors have cancelled books because of the trouble with the fan fiction works.

If the fan fiction writers are good enough they can create their world and characters without taking the existing ones from the other authors. If they really cared about the copyright and the ownership they'd ask the copyright owner for permission first, some will give it and some won't.

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There have been cases where fan fiction writers have disrupted what the original author was planning. While there have also been cases where people got prior approval and have improved the original author's world.

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Take a real life example. Lazlo Zalezac created the Damsels in Distress Universe and wrote several stories in that universe then he threw the doors open to allow others to write within the universe, and some took him up on that.

When I started writing in that universe I thought of ways to improve the universe, so I wrote to Lazlo to explain what I wanted to do, and he gave me approval to do so. Thus the universe has changed and it now has more freedom than the original had. However, others have also written stories which didn't adhere to the canon as laid down by Lazlo or as approved by him, and that has caused confusion for some readers about what is and isn't allowed within the DiD Universe.

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Lazlo open his universe to get other authors to expand on it, but he did so with the caveat they stay within the canon, not all have.

The Winds of Change universe is open because the creator of the universe no longer wishes to write in it, but there's room for many stories to be written in it.

I've opened a couple of universes I've created to allow other authors to write in them after they allow me to check the story. I'm thinking of opening some of them up to be fully public because I no longer wish to write in them.

Many people have many reasons for opening up a universe here at SoL, but not all are open to the public to write in.

So, again, while technically fan fiction is a copyright violation, practically, it's harmless (when distributed for free). Actually in my case, fan fiction was beneficial to the original copyright owners as I paid to watch all the movies that were produced.

More often, at $75 a pop for every variation of a published work, many authors simply can't afford to register each of their works, so suing someone as a deterrent (i.e. future losses lost due to someone else undermining your future story) is difficult to do. But that's hardly "harmless", as it diminishes the authors 'brand', a badly written copycat piece reflects poorly on the original author, and in the end, many people tend to read the FF rather than the original authors works, meaning they're LOSING money, whether the FF charges anyone for it for not!

DS, you're wrong in the way you're applying this.

As I explained, copyright does not protect the basic idea of a school for magic, nor does it protect a normal school named Hogwarts, but it does protect a school for magic named Hogwarts.

Copyright legislation is a law, and breaking the copyright is an unlawful act (or an illegal act if you want to use that term). It is the theft of the idea of another, just as breaking a patent law is a theft of an idea. In the most extreme cases copyright violations steals income from the copyright owner by selling false copies to people who could have bought the real thing from the copyright owner.

Fan fiction nibbles at the edges, but can have just as bad an effect in some cases.

The US Supreme Court has been quite clear on this, "a school for magic named Hogwarts." is a particular expression of an idea, not the idea itself.

I've not seen a US Supreme Court ruling saying that, but I'll accept you may have. However, the Harry Potter series is copyrighted under UK law and the US recognises and upholds the UK copyright laws, and under the UK laws a story set in the magical school of Hogwarts is a copyright infringement, while a story set in the magic school of Madam moth is not a copy right infringement. Most countries around the world will uphold the same meaning.

As i said a magic school is not copyrighted, nor is a school called Hogwarts, but together the magic school called Hogwarts is copyrighted.

Sounds to me that you and EB are saying the same thing but using slightly different words.

Dan Brown even used the same character names from the story he "didn't" plagiarise, but he apparently didn't violate its copyright.

AJ