Not to worry! Ms. Jareo has already anticipated all possible objections and responded to them, with the help of her 'interviewer.'

[please understand this is my sarcastic voice. And granted, copyright infringement...but she did it first!]

Q: I also wonder how far a writer is allowed to write in a world and to use characters introduced by another author?

If it’s not a commercial project, I don’t see any problem. George Lucas’ Star Wars universe is fertile territory for so-names “infinities,” or alternate storyline material. Thousands of people write them, and they are posted on hundreds of unofficial Star Wars-themed web sites on the Internet. Lucas himself said that as long as no one is making a profit, he thought such tributes were wonderful.

Q: Does your being an editor influence the way you go to work as a writer? If so, could you say in what way?

I made a conscious decision to remove my editor’s cap as I was writing this story. After so many years of being an editor, I wanted the creative freedom of being a writer. It took a whole new type of thinking to just write and finish the manuscript and leave the editing and business decisions for later. And once I got to that point, I was able to really write.

Q: What would you say to others who dream of writing a novel based on an existing world setting?

Writing such a novel is a lot of fun, especially if you have friends who are constantly saying, “Well, what if a certain character were put in a certain situation? I wonder how it would turn out.”
In 1999, that question was put to me, because as you know, the first three episodes of Star Wars were finally in the works. In these new movies, there are additional characters that could have made the older Star Wars universe even more exciting.
That’s what happened to me, as I found the characters of young Anakin and Padmé from Episode 1 and Ryoo and Pooja from Episode 2 impossible to resist. How would they grow and change over so many years? That is a fascinating question.

I do believe that relieves every concern people might have. Oh, yes.

( if I'm being rude to our kind facillitators in any unknowing way by posting this...well, I really hope I am not, and apologize profusely if I am.)

she's an editor?? for shame...

Wow. The Amazon page is pretty amusing, but I just took a look at the excerpt. Now that's entertainment - that's some phenomenally bad writing there.

I guess she sees a technical editor's job as consisting of telling people all day long "be more specific about how this works" - evidently she's applying this principle to fiction.

Is WordTech a vanity press? Their front page sort of smells like it to me. As our hosts have said, nothing wrong with that if it's honest.

I read the excerpt. *shudder* I tried to add the tag: "the goggles they do nothing!" but all amazon shows is "the goggles." Very sad.

-r.

P.S. I have to agree with one of the reviewers - the idea of killing off Obi Wan and Luke Skywalker, the heroes of the entire series, off-scene... well, it just doesn't get any better than that.

Maybe George Lucas could sponsor her, to silence all the complaints of "a fanfic writer could have done better than Episode 1".

Wow. As travesty goes, that one's lovely. I got to tell my wife about it and watch her eyes get wide.

Anyone want to start a pool on what legal penalties Ms. Jar-jareo is going to have to pay out?

::beats head against the desk::

The stupid -- it burns...

I'd bet the page disappears from Amazon before noon Pacific on Monday. Sooner if anyone at Lucas has been reading here.

There was a once-published cartoon that got George's attention, many years ago. It was only published once because he made it *very* clear that he'd hang the next person who published it, himself. I think Ms Jareo is in the running for that honor.

You can run but not hide on the internet.

http://www.journalfen.net/community/fandom_wank/928529.html

What I find odd is the debate of rationalizing of an illegal activity among those that like fanfic and want to legitimize it in various places.

I just... I mean how... what would posess... I mean... Seriosuly, just... stupidity so dense it warps space and time...

Please notice that this book has been up on Amazon since July 2005, and has an Amazon.com Sales Rank of #56,664 in Books (Yesterday: #39,951). Someone bought one or more copies, you betcha.

Did LucasFilms' lawyers purchase a box?

Did LucasFilms' lawyers purchase a box?

If they didn't, someone probably sent them a few copies.

Fanfic isn't illegal, per se (I remember the beginnings of the Mageworld series, thank you very much, and bought the books because I remembered those stories), but this kind of stupidity comes under the heading of 'universal capital punishment'.

All I can say is I feel soooo much better about my own writing skills after reading the exerpt, but my left eye won't stop twitching. Gah.

Entertaining though in that bad writing encourages the most entertaining reviews. This line in particular from the Amazon reviews: "The author is going to look like Aunt Beru by the time Lucas's lawyers are done with her."

I suppose someone could write the autobiography of Jar-Jar Binks and claim it was satire, but this...

Yargh.

Lucas, by rumor, is very lenient with fan artists. Remember the pastiche TROOPS? Allegedly, Lucas contacted the people who made it and told them it's very good, very funny, and please don't do anything that would make it necessary for me to sue you. It's still out there on the Web, and they haven't been sued, so it sure doesn't look like he's a hard ass. Hell, even Paramount has supposedly given up trying to persecute -- I mean, prosecute -- fanfic publishers that maintain a low profile.

Does the fact that she copyrighted the material make any difference? I don't believe that fanfic writers can claim copyright even of their own prose, because it's in violation already.

All in all, I wonder if Lucas can ignore this even if he wants to. I know that copyright isn't the same as trademark (in which case she'd be in such a mountain of shit), but I'm thinking that even if he can't lose his copyright by failing to defend it, it is a really bad precedent.

Personally, I'd like to see him come down on her like a ton of bricks. Stupidity should be its own reward. Would it put other fanfic writers at risk? Commercial vs. non-commercial isn't really the division that distinguishes copyright violation, although fanfic writers will continue to insist that it is.

(Note, I have been saying things about copyright, and I am not a legal expert in the field, therefore everything I say could be wrong six ways from Sunday. Corrections welcomed.)

I believe that even material that itself infringes on someone else's material is copyrightable, but I'm nearly certain that it doesn't matter.

Oh, I don't know. It's...fun to watch. In the same way you can't look away from a train wreck.

But ye gods, that woman is as much an editor as I am!

What I thought was interesting (as a used book dealer myself) was a glance at the page of "used" copies. A dozen or so vendors purport to have copies to sell you at a discount rate. These are, of course, the bottom feeders who use web scraping software to find out what books are selling, snuffle up the info and then put on a listing for themselves. They don't ever HAVE the books, they just figure they will grab a copy elsewhere (from the publisher or a seller on a more modestly priced site) if they actually get lucky and get an order. You can look at their feedback scores to see how well this plan works in real life as far as buyers are concerned.

My informal understanding of the copyright status of fanfic is that it's neither saleable nor in the public domain. You may be playing with stuff that doesn't belong to you, but you still own your own words.

In an alternate timeline:

Dear Ms. Bauer:

My name is Lori Jareo, and I'm trying to find an agent willing to help get my Star Wars novel, Another Hope, published....

The customer tags on the Amazon listing are entertaining. :-)

"Only for my friends and family." Yes. That's why it's listed on a very, very public database, instead of on a private website, or a friends-locked catalogue page at Lulu. A public database that you don't get into by accident.

I saw this via a couple of fanfic LJs yesterday. Some fanficcers can write very well indeed, and some of those fanficcers are currently devoting their keyboard time and command of language to expressing their opinion of this sort of terminal stupidity. They are not happy bunnies right now.

Good grief. Now, I'm a writer. I've written over 250,000 collective words in stories I'm trying to sell. But for this? I have no words whatsover.

I think the best nutshell summary is out of that list of Amazon reviewer tags: "weapons-grade stupidity". I couldn't describe this better if I tried.

Lydy, you're actually right about the difference between enforcing copyright and trademark. Trademark owners have to be hardassed, because failure to enforce can be used to kill a lawsuit against a genuine baddie down the road.

Anybody who's read up a bit on the Inquisition may recall that they generally didn't start right off torturing accused witches; the "instruments" would be shown to the accused first, and their use explained, to give them a chance to confess first. Copyright enforcement generally works the same way, although in these modern times, the "instruments" are cease-and-desist letters rather than say, red-hot irons. More's the pity.

Gods.

Years ago when I was working at Tor I had an instructive conversation with one of a pair of writers who had written a vast opus based on Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's St. Germain books. The clue-free young woman could not understand why Yarbro was being so mean about her selling her own book, because it was written in her words, and anyway it was an homage to the source material and anyway it was mean to pick on the fans who loved the work, and showed Yarbro didn't love her fans as much as they loved her work and anyway...

It looks like Lori Jareo is cut from the same but-it's-me-so-the-rules-don't-count cloth.

Torie, it's worse than you think. Not only is she an editor, but she got her degree in Journalism.

Fanfic is a violation of copyright no ands, ifs, or buts, covered under derivative works. It survives on the good graces of the rights holders who all have different breaking points to their patience when it comes to the legal smackdown. Why so many in fanfic try to convince themselves and others that it's legal and ok is beyond me.

Why so many in fanfic try to convince themselves and others that it's legal and ok is beyond me.

Uh. Most of us explicitly state that we understand that it's not strictly legal. (Unless we write about stuff that's in the public domain.)

And then a nutbar like this pops up and trashes our collective image yet again.

Teresa, could that listing on Amazon be there *without* the book being in Ingram or similar? If she already had a small press then she probably had a stock of ISBNs, but it looks as if she has gone to some trouble and expense to ensure that the book is available through Amazon as well as directly from her. Those are not things the normal fanzine publisher does.

T.W., it's hardly a phenomenon limited to fanfic. Go all over the Web and you'll see people reprint others' copyrighted works with the disclaimer "I will take this down if the author complains", or posts on Slashdot insisting that as long as what you write is funny, it's "parody" and therefore exempt from copyright, it's fair use if you don't sell it, and so on. Then they get shirty if you point out that they are violating copyright, snipping "What's the harm?" and getting downright nasty if you suggest that perhaps they should simply have asked the author for permission.

they generally didn't start right off torturing accused witches; the "instruments" would be shown to the accused first, and their use explained, to give them a chance to confess first.

States of course also used torture or its threat routinely to obtain confessions, say if they had an anonymous tip-off about someone (after all, it could just be a business rival, or other beneficiary of their misfortune, or someone with a grudge, and sometimes even a mistake), as well as to get evidence from possible co-conspirators (people close to the accused) as to any suspicious goings-on. Fortunately, a couple of hundred years of fought-over social advancement means civilized countries don't do this any more.

According to WordTech Communication's web site, their books are in Ingram, so I would guess that her's is too (since WordTech is listed as the publisher.)

What puzzles me is based on what I read at their web site:
"New Paradigm", "non-returnable", "importance of sales", "marketing tips", this is not a publisher to which I would consider submitting my work. (Well, I don't know much about publishing. Is this normal in the world of publishing poetry?)

Thanks to reading Making Light faithfully, all of these things read to me as saying that you're unlikely to sell very many copies of your book (since they don't seem to work on terms which might encourage bookstores to stock their books) if you publish with them. This makes me wonder if she might have meant it when she said it was just for friends and family? If it's not in the bookstores, who else is going to know about this, unless it has some sort of notoriety like, in this case, copyright infringement. Actually, I suspect Star Wars names are trademarked. If so, there is an issue there too.

Either way, making it available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Powell's was not the most intelligent thing one could do. Even rights holders who tend to look the other way when it comes to fanfic have to take action when something like this happens.

As everyone else has pointed out, she certainly seems to have enough experience to have known better (or at least to know how to make it available only to family and friends).

Too bad she's not a member of a professional peer organization who can then strip her of any creditials for this. You, out of the guild now! I guess she goes onto all the writer's warning lists now.

Well, you know, we should be thanking her.

Because now, no matter WHAT blunders any of us might ever make or obstacles we might encounter, they aren't even close -- I don't think they're even on the same continent -- as this woman's little publishing escapade.

Accidentally submit a story two places at once? "At least I didn't try to sell fanfic on Amazon!" Get a rejection letter? "Well, at least my submission was legal!"

Instant silver lining.

And gee, it would've been fun to see what happened if she'd submitted to PublishAmerica. Alas, then it wouldn't have ended up on Amazon.

Or, you know, anywhere else you can buy books.

HA! Gee, fanfic writers are just like the MP3 file sharers, software hackers, pirates, etc. Always the same arguments, always the same results. Sooner or later someone gets a major case of the stupids and ruins the party for everybody else. My guess is that at the end of this buzz saw Lucas will “re-imagine” Episode IV and substitute the picture of Wordtech offices for the Jawa Transport after the storm troopers attack, and Ms. Jareo will resemble Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru when Luke goes back to the sand igloo. Anybody got marshmallows? I bet it’s going to be a glorious fire.

Oh, and Troopers was created as an entry into the Star Wars Fan Film contest sponsored by Lucas. Just to remind everybody about that part.

There's certainly some cultural weirdness going on. Free, easy-access information makes for easy plagiarism (as I can tell you, from having to grade my students' papers by checking phrases on Google to see what they've lifted from websites). Our current entitlement culture has bred a whole generation that believes that they just deserve stuff. Hence, "it's free" and "I deserve stuff" meet on the web when people illegally trade music and software, and rip text off of other websites to paste into their own instead of bothering to write anything original.

If you bring up the little issue of copyright, you get this, "Geez, you're such a greedy jerk," response.

Steve Buchheit - TROOPS predates the Lucas-approved fan film awards. It was released in 1997, while the awards started in 2002.

TW: Why so many in fanfic try to convince themselves and others that it's legal and ok is beyond me.

Writerious: There's certainly some cultural weirdness going on.

It's not some kind of inexplicable mystery, it's just the way humans are. Copyright laws (and similar laws) are only a few centuries old. The impulse to swap around story material goes all the way back before recorded history. It might predate our species.

Making up stories with the characters in your head -- even if they're immigrants, rather than native-born -- is a natural and common human impulse. Wanting to share your stories with other people, likewise natural and common, and now easier than ever. (The Internet makes publishing so easy that it's possible for people to fail to realize that they're doing it.) Realizing that some of the characters who've immigrated into your head are actually still enslaved subjects of their original land, that's something new. Not everybody gets that, and not everybody will.

Passing copyright laws and expecting everyone to go along is like passing monogamy laws and expecting that nobody will stray. It just ain't gonna happen.

Yes, but fanfiction is older than the current culture of "free, easy access information" and downloading. I'm no expert (though some other commenters here are) & I know fanfic as a modern phenomenon is generally considered to have begun with the original Star Trek series.

There are many impulses behind the creation of fanfic, and thumbing one's nose at copyright holders is only a minor consideration, if at all.

Dunc, true enough that Troops was released before the Fan Film awards. Thanks, was going from memory and didn't do the research.

I'd say fanfic goes back to Sherlock Holmes, at the very least. There is a long history of 'pastiches' among the Doyle fans.

And it gets really weird when you get Holmes meeting Trek ...

I don't know how long fanfic has been around, but sometime before 1976, which is when I met it. It was doing quite well then, too, but it was pretty much ignored, possibly because a really large print run was still under a thousand copies.

I actually agree with the entitlement thing.

Wanting to tell stories with the characters in your head -- even if, as was said, they're immigrants -- is natural enough. Where entitlement comes into it is when you feel you have a /right/ to spread the resulting work around in public. Or, more specifically, to do so even when the original author says 'please, don't post fanfic of my characters or in my world.'

For my day-job (alas, 'aspiring writer' does not pay the bills too well), I am a software engineer. The software I help write, we sell for $25 a copy. Fairly cheap. Further, there is a free version (which misses a few features) available.

And yet, there are people who don't want to pay... and yet feel they are entitled to the Pro version without paying. There's an entire website for a pirate group who exist solely to pirate each new build of our program and remove the protection from the commercial version, and redistribute it along with all the add-ons from our member site. They and their devotees feel they are entitled to have this software -- when we are slow to release a version, they whine about us 'not giving good service,' they crow about how wonderful new versions are when they come out... yet they never pay for anything.

Before this job, I worked at a video game company. Tons of people would pirate the games, and claim, 'well, if I couldn't have pirated it, I wouldn't have bought it, so you didn't lose any money anyway.' Which is a rationalization... what it boils down to is they don't want to spend money on things, but they feel entitled to have them.

Software piracy, music piracy, and suchnot have an air of entitlement to them -- and I'd say fanfic like this does, too -- because you aren't 'stealing.' Breaking into a house and taking a DVD player, stealing a car from a dealer... those things, the person is left without the original. But an MP3? A game? Characters from a book? Hey, the originals are still right where you left them, so no one loses, right?

And so people who wouldn't dream of stealing a car, or a DVD player, feel entitled to steal these things. Hence the 'attitude of entitlement,' I think. At least, that's my $0.02 + state sales tax.

Well, I have for long thought that 'fanfic' is a new name for slight variant on an exceedingly ancient human variety of storytelling (storytelling probably being one of the earliest human characteristics, stemming from some of the markers of consciousness).
If you look at the raggeder quotation sites, retold anecdotes, urban legends and clarification sites where stories are listed, you can see some of the process which in olden days gave us mythology, folk tales & epics. Folksong & filking are quite similar processes too. It's only in the last few hundred years that commercial law & suchlike got involved.

Epacris: I'm completely with you. Virgil was totally doing Homer fanfic, the story of Jason and the Argonauts was a crossover miniseries, and I am firmly convinced that the ending of Iphigeneia at Aulis was retconned. The words are new, but the concepts sure aren't.

And Dante was doing Virgil fanfic.

Just how would this even get on Amazon to begin with? Wouldn't they have some sort of vetting in place?

The trouble with Amazon starting to check is that they then have to check everything.

I'm surprised by how casually some commenters are comparing MP3 filesharing to writing and posting fanfic (for free, that is--obviously, to attempt to profit from your copyright violations like the writer who inspired this thread is not kosher and is very very dumb).

Fan fiction, fan art, etc. are, whatever you think of their merits, additional material in an already existing (sometimes copyrighted) fictional universe. Fanfic is based on existing material created by someone else; pirated files are existing material created by someone else. If you download a song for free, you may be doing that instead of paying for the album, but if you read or write a story about Jar-Jar Binks and Lieutenant Mary Sue saving the universe from bad novelists or whatever, you're not doing that to save yourself the price of a ticket to the movie. (In fact, you've probably shelled out for a good deal of Star Wars merchandise by the time you start thinking about writing your Jar-Jar/Mary Sue opus.)

I do think that distinction is worth making, even if some find fanfic objectionable for various reasons nonetheless.

Just how would this even get on Amazon to begin with? Wouldn't they have some sort of vetting in place?

The vetting that takes place at Amazon is this: "Has ISBN? Yes/No"

Which is, frankly, all that it needs to be.

Oh... let's take another look behind those 'interview questions':
(a.k.a. The Apocryphal Interview)

Q: What was the easiest/fun part of this project?

The fact that the universe was already created for me.

Q: What was the hardest part?

Remembering how many y's to put in Kashyyyk.

Q: Do you feel that writing an apocryphal novel is much harder work than if you had created a universe or world of your own? What goes into writing an apocryphal novel anyway?

Well, since I've never created my own world...I can't really answer that question. As far as writing an apocryphal novel for someone else's universe, it's like stealing an idea...then using your own publishing company to fund its production. A complete waste of time and money. Completely ethical and oh-so-skippy-neat-o!

Q: Given the chance to write a script or a storyline on which a Star Wars movie would be based, what would be your ideal scenario or plot?
I think I may have just blackballed myself from ever doing work with LucasArts. Oh well, I have two more novels for this series :D .

Q: What do you think writers should take into consideration when writing science fiction?
Originality.Originality.Originality---and a good editor.

Q: How does it feel to have published your first novel?
Yippee! (?!) It was no sweat. I didn't even fear a form rejection.

Q. Does having this first novel create any tension towards writing subsequent books?
See above answer.

Q: Does your being an editor influence the way you go to work as a writer? If so, could you say in what way?

I made a conscious decision to remove my editor’s cap as I was writing this story. Unfortunately the cap was stolen by Bobba Fett and later eaten by the great and powerful Sarlac when Bobba fell in.

Q: Do you use any rituals/practices to stimulate the writing process?
I watch the director's cut of Episodes I,II,III all the time!

Q: What would you say to others who dream of writing a novel based on an existing world setting?
Start a small press first, then publish at will.
* * *

Stooopid hobbitsses. Styupid, styupid hobbitsses.

-=Jeff=-

I suppose someone could write the autobiography of Jar-Jar Binks and claim it was satire, but this...

Now there's an audiobook I'd avoid.

Q: How does it feel to have published your first novel?
Yippee! (?!) It was no sweat. I didn't even fear a form rejection.

This brings to mind one of my favorite interviews. Take it away, Jim Theis!

Because how many people have had their first story
published at16-even if it is in a fanzine or club-zine? How many professional
writers have written a complete story at so early an age?

...just informed a few family members, friends and acquaintances. Oh, and made sure it was in their Parish newsletter:

Book News St. Timothy's members Kevin Walzer and Lori Jareo both would like to announce the publication of their new books. Kevin's book is called Austere Offices (ISBN: 1933456043) and is a book of poems about corporate life. Lori's book is called Another Hope (ISBN: 1933456027) and her book is a Star Wars-themed science fiction novel. Both are available on Amazon.com. Both Kevin and Lori will be reading from their new books at Over Coffee on December 3. Kevin begins reading at 7:00 p.m. and Lori follows at 7:30 p.m. Over Coffee is located at the corner of Clough and Eight Mile. There is a nice children's area and kids are welcome.

URL (bottom of page) http://www.sainttimothys.com/Pages_publications/Cross_Nov_2005.htm

Oh. I'm sorry. Have my Google skills(z) gone to the Darkside?
Wonder how long it'll take to clear Amazon.de?

-=Jeff=-

Also available via international distribution in Korea, as well as Italy.

An amazing inventory display of books ready to ship to 'friends and family'. Thank you Canada for that link.

Oh well, my path to the Googling Darkside is now complete.

-=Jeff=-

Similarly, the US analogue to the Canadian list.

It appears Amazon has deleted almost all of the comments, sadly. Evidently they'll only allow those that critique the work itself, rather than just mocking the author.

sylvia - Very, very well-said.

If you want to do music analogies, fanfic is a lot closer to mash-ups. (In some sense you could say cross-over fanfic is an exact analogy to a mash-up.) A lot of independent creativity goes into some of them, and yet you always end up with something that could never be sold or distributed legally, because it directly and obviously incorporates other copyrighted works owned by aggressive enforcers of copyright.

As with fanfics, many mash-ups are notable only for the novelty factor, some just aren't worth listening to, and a few are really amazing works of art.

The Kleptones latest album, '24 Hours' is mind-blowing, and puts a lot of commercial works to shame. Their work keeps getting better with each album; Yoshimi was not bad, Night at the Hip-Hopera was pretty good, excellent in places, but 24 Hours is stunning. I'd say it's a pity that it can't be sold conventionally, except that the Kleptones clearly know exactly what they're doing and have made an artistic choice to work in this medium. (Same as some of the fanfic writers who are very capable of writing professionally, and do, but also love writing fanfic.) If you are not appalled by the whole idea, Google around until you find a Bittorrent or download site for '24 Hours', burn yourself the two CDs, and give it a listen.

P.S. This is the UK Kleptones; don't get confused if your googling turns up a different group with the same name.

"Not only is she an editor, but she got her degree in Journalism."

A degree in Journalism is hardly a "Certificate Of Genius" (or "Modesty") -- and this case surely proves it...
;-)

Jokes aside -- sad as the "Fanfic Affair" may be, it's symptomatic of human nature. When a work of art becomes widely popular, people start to think of it as "theirs". Same thing happens with celebrities: the fans think of them as "theirs".

Shakespeare's HAMLET? It's a "Saga of Amled" fanfic. (The "Saga of Amled" was written down by the medieval Danish chronicler Saxo Grammaticus, and is in turn rooted in some ancient Indo-European mythology. A fanfic of a fanfic of a fanfic...) Not meaning to defend all fanfiction -- actually I don't really like the genre -- but I can see where it comes from.

And that excerpt from "Another Hope"... whoa! The book should be retitled ALL YOU EVER WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT STAR-DESTROYER TECHNOLOGY BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK.

Actually, I can understand the confusion about fanfic to some extent. Anyone who wants to write about King Arthur or Robin Hood can do so, and plenty of people have, and there's nothing wrong with that. I've written a novel for Tor that plagiarized The Count of Monte Cristo, and had no moral or legal problem in doing so.

The distinction that "those are public domain and Star Wars isn't" really isn't all that obvious to someone born after 1977; all these mythologies have been around forever, i.e., since before they were born.

For someone who claims to be an editor with a degree in journalism, though, it's a bit much.

I'm a bit baffled by how many people are conflating "what she did was clearly illegal" with "what she did was clearly immoral"; it's hardly an indefensible position to hold that there's no prima facie obligation to obey the law. And the "derivative work" right is one of the least defensible parts of copyright. Not indefensible, certainly, but if you're going to be against part of the bundle, that's a good one to pick

Too bad she didn't claim her novel was primarily intended as a transgressive satire of ANH, or she could've cited The Wind Done Gone as precedent.

PLN, there's also a large helping of "what she did, and what she said about it, was clearly stupid."

Clifton: "Yet you always end up with something that could never be sold or distributed legally, because it directly and obviously incorporates other copyrighted works owned by aggressive enforcers of copyright."

But then how is the sampling done by rappers legal? I've wondered about that for years.

Julie L. hits on something by mentioning The Wind Done Gone, namely the fuzzy area of intent. TWDG was intended as satire, a critique of both the original work and the strange fan world it has generated (I live in GA and was in Atlanta last week. Many Atlanteans have an unhealthy obsession with the work of Margaret Mitchell). Fanfic is different than satire. It comes wrapped in an implied desire to become part of the fictional world. The author of Another Hope is not critiquing Lucas work or deconstructing the Star Wars universe to make some greater sstatementabout the human condition or literature or mass media in general. She’s indulging in high geekery and hoping to score Whuffie.

Adding to an already extensive comments thread...

Clearly Ms Jareo is not in full possession of her faculties and fully deserves the public dressing-down she has received. I'm a little disappointed though by the number of posts here that say they *want* her to be sued by Lucas. What is it with the Schadenfreude? Why isn't it enough that she receive the cease-and-desist letter and that she ceases and desists?

The real harm that she has done is not to Lucas's intellectual property, which appears to have survived even his own best efforts to make it unsaleable. The real harm is that Ms Jareo is running a writer's workshop at what appears to be a respected program and is using Another Hope in her bio as evidence of her experience as an author.

Do I want Lucas to sue her? God no. Who the hell wants *more* encroachment by the intellectual property lawyers on public life? But the organisers of the West Chester University Poetry Conference ought to review their decision to allow Ms Jareo to run one of the workshops. Maybe she is still appropriate, but on the evidence at hand I would think she is quite possibly a very bad choice to be put in charge of a workshop aimed at beginning writers. People are paying $85 per workshop for this.

Linkmeister: They shell out royalties to the copyright holders.

But then how is the sampling done by rappers legal? I've wondered about that for years.

Initially, it wasn't. These days, people who release music based on samples of other music have to go through legal clearances to use the samples and usually pay a royalty to the original artist.

Or they distribute it on the web and hope that nobody notices.

Hmm. My guess for when that Amazon page is going to be down by is 10am Eastern on Monday -- and I wouldn't be surprised if it was down by 10am British Summer Time to be honest.

The original links from Nick Mamatas' page don't work, as of 9:30 Eastern Daylight Savings. I guess that a Star Destroyer zapped a few servers; hopefully no innocent hosting sites were hit.

Keir

And Dante was doing Virgil fanfic.

Dante wrote Gary Stu fanfic.

To round out the 'fan fic is in legal limbo' discussion, it all comes down to money. ::shrug::

Lawrence Watt Evans wrote: "I've written a novel for Tor that plagiarized The Count of Monte Cristo"
Did you actually lift chunks of the original French, or translated, text and plonk them straight into your book? Or did you just use the story and characters?
There seems to be a confusion between plagiarise (literal copying of the words) and what mostly seems to be in dispute here, which is using the invented world, characters, events & such in your work.

I'd like to keep the distinction, tho it's annoying there doesn't seem to be a simple single word for the deed discussed.

PS: Mr Watt-Evans, your authorlink from Tor goes to your old page. Altho the redirection works, it might look better if it was updated.
(Note to cat-vacuumers everywhere; checking links-to-you are correct is probably an excellent time-sucker-up; possibly with a higher temporal vanishing index than re-checking your links out. There is probably a tool that helps.)

Redletter: Dante was writing Gary Stu fanfic

Too true. (And, by the way, I'd never heard the name Gary Stu before. Took me a while to figure it out.)

Yeah, I suspected that when rap went mainstream (?) the usual royalty scheme (British sense of the word) took over, but in its early days I have my doubts that anyone paid much attention to permissions. I wonder whose record pushed whose buttons.

Mez: LWE is using "plagiarize" in the broadest possible sense -- Dragon Weather and its sequels are inspired by The Count of Monte Cristo but the details of plot and character are quite different. Not to mention that the setting is not France but an invented fantasy world. IANAL, but I think that even if Count weren't public domain, the copyright holder would have no case.

Quoth Mez: There seems to be a confusion between plagiarise (literal copying of the words) and what mostly seems to be in dispute here, which is using the invented world, characters, events & such in your work. I'd like to keep the distinction, tho it's annoying there doesn't seem to be a simple single word for the deed discussed.

I think the phrase is "derivative work". But afaik once the serial numbers are filed off (changing the names etc.), derivative works are legally in the clear even if the underlying structures are still recognizable-- Sword of Shannara, anyone?-- which really makes me wonder how the Mitchell estate phrased their Wind Done Gone case, other than losingly.

Keith Kisser wrote:
"Fanfic is different than satire. It comes wrapped in an implied desire to become part of the fictional world."

Hmmm... when Virtual Reality technology finally becomes viable, will we see an explosion of Star Wars fan-VR ...?
;-)

Dante wrote Gary Stu fanfic.

Isn't part of the definition of Gary Stu/Marty Sam/Mary Sue that the character should be an idealised version of the author? The Dante in the Divine Commedy is constantly being criticised by Virgil and Beatrice.

Somehow I missed Keith's statement before this, but surely it requires some minor tweakage for reality-based fanfic such as RPS (real-person slash). Still, the distinction between wish-fulfillment and satire probably remains, in that writers of Elijah Wood/Orlando Bloom smut probably have far more sandwich-filling dreams about their pair than writers of Bush/Chirac.

(RPS gives me the willies. Nevertheless, it exists.)

Hmmm... when Virtual Reality technology finally becomes viable, will we see an explosion of Star Wars fan-VR ...?

Well, it's not quite VR yet, but there's Star Wars: Galaxies, which is an MMORPG. I have never played it, myself (my heart belongs to World of Warcraft), so I don't know how faithful the experience is, but it's certainly a step in the direction of Star Wars VR, if not "fan" VR.

Linkmeister: I wonder whose record pushed whose buttons.

I don't think it was just one, but the one I remember distinctly was the track "Transmitting Live From Mars" by De La Soul, which used a riff from a song by The Turtles. One of the original musicians caught wind of it and the rest is litigation history.

I know about Star Wars Galaxies. Oddly, a lot of people complain about the game's "experience" of being "in" the "Star Wars Universe". Turns out -- surprise! -- that not every player gets to be a Jedi.

Fanfiction runs into the same issue from the other direction: it makes it WAY too easy to become a Jedi...

There are several Star Wars-themed fan games, actually; SW:G is only one of the breed. I played on Star Wars MUSH for two and a half years, myself, as well as on the first iteration of SW:G; there was also one called Clone Wars MUSH. And nope, not everybody gets to be a Jedi on these games, though that isn't necessarily the goal of everybody on them anyway.

But then, "not everybody gets to have the elite position that all the stories in the actual canon are about" is true of just about all of the fandom games and groups out there. Fanfic makes it way easier than MU*'s to get your character into the position you want, sure--assuming you're writing alone. If you're in a group, you'll probably be dealing with some version of similar rules. Offline Pern fandom groups don't hand out gold and bronze dragons to everybody, either.

I don't have any idea what, if anything, I can do about the link to my webpage from Tor's site; that's Tor's problem, not mine.

Yes, I was using "plagiarize" in a broad sense, but there are a few bits in Dragon Weather that come pretty close to directly swiping paragraphs from the prison scenes in Count of Monte Cristo. It wouldn't be legally actionable even if Dumas were still alive and Count still under copyright, but it's close enough that I wouldn't have done it; it would have felt unethical.

Ms. Jareo doesn't seem to have the same ethics.

Ms. Jareo doesn't seem to have the same ethics.

The Count of Monte Cristo is Public Domain, having been written in 1844. Had Walt Disney written Steamboat Willie, things might have been different, but as it stands, The Count is Public Domain. And while you are unwilling to "plagarize" a Public Domain work, it is completely legal, while Jareo "plagarized" a work still protected under copyright law. So, Jareo may not have your ethics, but what you're talking about doing is completely legal, while what Jareo did is illegal.

As an aside, wikipedia says that The Count is based on a true story, that Dumas found in a memoir written by a man named Jacques Peuchet. So, perhaps one could argue that while Jareo doesn't have the same ethics as you, she does have the same ethics as Dumas. I don't know how much Dumas lifted from the original, so it's just speculation...

Dante did not write Gary Stu. Gary/Mary is an alter ego. Dante wrote in the first person singular, as himself.

Dante did not write Virgil fanfic. He did not use Virgil's characters or situations. He incorporated Virgil, himself, the author. Dante did use some fictional characters--Odysseus, for example--but most of the persons he used were quite real. (And I am not at all certain that Dante would have regarded Odysseus as fictional.)

The analogy would be to including George Lucas as a character in your novel. I suspect George's lawyers might have something to say about that as well, but not on copyright grounds, and perhaps not on very strong legal grounds of any sort.

Lawrence Watt-Evans: I was born in 1981, and I fully understand the difference between imitating the tone of a published author, and publishing fanfic. I don't think this had anything to do with ethics. In my humble opinion, this had to do with the gross stupidity of an 'editor' who has obviously never spoken to a legal department.

"Just for friends and family." So, I've got to imagine that a letter like this went to same when she published it...

Dearest Family and Friends,

Please give Amazon twenny bux (each), so that you may read my brilliant Star Wars fanfic. A picture is worth a thousand words, so I am sure you will be willing to trade 20 portraits of President Washington (looking somewhat green) for 90,000 words! It's like getting 70,000 words for free! The things I do for you, my family and friends, it amazes even me. My work is over 77% free to you.

While I am sure there is no potential legal issue, I advise my friends, and indeed my family, to purchase at least one copy right away, so that if it becomes a collector's item, you'll have one to keep!

I look forward to the royalty checks and strong words of praise I am sure to be getting soon from my friends and family. Isn't that what friends are for?

If you find yourself with other questions about what would happen if two characters from someone else's story were put into a particular circumstance, I'm sure I can answer it for you for $20. I already have lots of Ideas about Legolas and Quickbeam!

Your friend (or family member),
Lori Jareo
aka Lorja Jacle

One reason that Jareo's actions are being castigated as not only illegal but also immoral is that by her selfishness in wanting to make a few bucks*, she is potentially inviting a crackdown on fanfic in general, and therefore screwing over people who just want to have fun with their hobby.

* Her lying about this isn't helping her case either. "Friends and family", my shiny metal ass.

Is this one of those things that's going to go off the market and I'm going to deeply regret not buying? Because I would be willing to pay a good 20-25 bucks for a copy of Night Travels of the Elven Vampire if anyone has one.

The analogy would be to including George Lucas as a character in your novel. I suspect George's lawyers might have something to say about that as well, but not on copyright grounds, and perhaps not on very strong legal grounds of any sort.

Actually, I've heard that Mr. Lucas just adored this.

As an aside, wikipedia says that The Count is based on a true story, that Dumas found in a memoir written by a man named Jacques Peuchet.

That's what he said about the Chevalier d'Artagnan, too. And Cagliostro (who we all know is not that Vinegar Joe Balsamic guy the Masons tried to fob off). And Cesare Borgia, who whatever else you can say about him at least made the trains run on time. And the Phantom of the Opera. No, wait, he didn't write about the Phantom of the Opera, that was Gaston Leroux, before he went into vaudeville with Alphonse. Well, never mind, I happen to know that one of the original "Corsican Brothers" was named Maria Susanna. I don't know what to make of that.

Anyway, I am only saying that we vaguely historical personages, wherever we are,* really do not mind very much being taken for a walk around the yard by writers, at least ones good enough to give us a few snappy lines. Julius Caesar has been dining out for a long time now on "'Et tu, Brute!' Of all the stand-ins for that particular verb I've heard, 'et' has got to be the funniest." As your King Louis the Vaguely Absent's favorite economist said, "In the long run, we're all oygeshpilt."

Yours very,
M. Planchet
Adventurous Supernumerary and General Dogsbody

*I have a nice flat in La Défense. Alphonse Donatien François, Marquis de Vous-Connais-What, is adjacent, but thank God he is downstairs. Comte de Richelieu says we are in Hell, but then he is what the English call a Eurosceptic..

Actually, I've heard that Mr. Lucas just adored this.

Funny stuff, that.

we vaguely historical personages

get thee to a nunnery....

Mike, that's wonderful--"of all the stand-ins for that particular verb I've heard, 'et' has got to be the funniest." Indeed!

Didn't Donald Kingsbury write and publish (to some critical acclaim) some Asimov fanfic with all the serial numbers filed off? In my opinion it was a much better development of the original Foundation universe than any of Asimov's (or Benford/Bear/Brin's) pre/sequel stuff, but nonetheless it seems as if under today's copyright regime it was just a hair to the "legal" side of the "copyright violation" line.

I don't know. It's clear that if a fictive work is of diminished coherence -- or even nonsensical -- when one hasn't read some source opus, then that work is at least artistically derivative. But should that be enough to make it legally derivative in terms of copyright law? If a global search-and-replace is enough of a legal fig leaf, why shouldn't fanfic writers just write "Garry Topper" stories. Others can then distribute a separate set of emacs and Microsoft Word macros which let readers remove the fig leaf. Or maybe fans would develop a taste for Garry/Snipe slash...

Didn't Donald Kingsbury write and publish (to some critical acclaim) some Asimov fanfic with all the serial numbers filed off?

It's a bit more original than that makes it sound, and IMO much more entertaining than Dr A's series (which has, also IMO, not aged that well). I have trouble with some of the measurement stuff being way over my head (at least the worst of it is in an appendix)! And the cover art is just almost worth the price in itself.

John M. Ford: Everybody knows that Cesare Borgia didn't get the trains to run on time. Everybody who took the ferrovia in the Romagna or Lazio back in 1495 knows that the schedule was a joke, and the trains even more so.

Entitlement is not the starting point.

Storytelling is basic to our species. It's one of the ways we parse our experience of the universe. Whatever moves us or matters to us will show up in the stories we tell, whether or not we have a socially approved outlet for those stories. It might surprise you to find out how many writers have works of personal erotica tucked away in their unpublished-or-unpublishable manuscript trunks. There's no good way to get those published, but they write them anyway, because they're writers, and eroticism is an important part of our lives.

Good fiction gets under our skin. It can change the way we see the world. But whatever its effect, it's a significant experience. It would be a bizarre thing -- unnatural, even -- for writers to not engage with that experience. They always have. I could show you stuff centuries old -- heck, some of it's millennias old -- that's fanfic by any modern definition.

Of course, it would have to be a modern definition. In a purely literary sense, fanfic doesn't exist. There is only fiction. Fanfic is a legal category created by the modern system of trademarks and copyrights. Putting that label on a work of fiction says nothing about its quality, its creativity, or the intent of the writer who created it.

The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction this year went to March, a novel by Geraldine Brooks, published by Viking. It's a re-imagining of the life of the father of the four March girls in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. Can you see a particle of difference between that and a work of declared fanfiction? I can't. I can only see two differences: first, Louisa May Alcott is out of copyright; and second, Louisa May Alcott, Geraldine Brooks, and Viking are dreadfully respectable.

I'm just a tad cynical about authors who rage against fanfic. Their own work may be original to them, but even if their writing is so outre that it's barely readable, they'll still be using tropes and techniques and conventions they picked up from other writers. We have a system that counts some borrowings as legitimate, others as illegitimate. They stick with the legit sort, but they're still writing out of and into the shared web of literature. They're not so different as all that.

Fanfic means someone cares about what you wrote.

Personally, I'm convinced that the legends of the Holy Grail are fanfic about the Eucharist.

This really is a basic impulse.

I've never heard that George Lucas had a mad on for fanfic. I hope that's true, because he's probably the most successful bricoleur in late 20th Century narrative art.

Lori Jareo is stupid because she put her fanfic into print and put it up for sale on Amazon. I still can't quite believe that a working editor with a degree in Journalism could pull a stunt like that. That's as far as my condemnation goes. My only problem with her writing fanfic per se is that she's so bad at it.

I've not read the book, so I'm not making any recommendations, but Tim Lucas's The Book of Renfield might be relevant to this discussion. It's a retelling of Stoker's Dracula from Renfield's point of view. The book uses the conceit that Dr. Seward is an unreliable narrator, whose phonograph diaries and transcriptions have been dishonestly edited. Lucas then presents the unedited transcriptions, which tell a different story. In practice, this means that huge chunks of Stoker's prose have been lifted verbatim from the original, with Lucas's new text interpolated. You can read an excerpt at the linked site. Stoker's prose is boldfaced; Lucas's is not.

Other than the typographical trick, this approach would seem to satisfy the hypothetical situation of plagiarizing text in the public domain. Or at least, it seems like the literary equivalent to hip-hop sampling or some kind of mashup.

(Obligatory disclaimer when linking to a commercial site: I'm not affiliated with Tim Lucas or his publisher in any way, and, again, have not even read the book beyond the linked excerpt. I do read VideoWatchdog online and lurk at the Classic Horror forums, which is where I heard about it.)

Teresa: Your last paragraph pretty much nailed it.
I suspect a lot of us have a story in our (figurative) trunk or in our head, wanting to get out but not publishable commercially because Someone With Large Lawyers would jump on us, regardless of writing quality. (I know that mine is not good writing, but I'm letting it stay where it is.)

By the way, I have to disagree with Keith Kisser's statement, quoted by Yngve, that "Fanfic is different than satire. It comes wrapped in an implied desire to become part of the fictional world."

First, it's different from, not different than.

Second, neither of those characteristics is necessarily present in or absent from fanfic. Some fanfic is satirical. Much isn't. Some of it -- especially that dreck Mary Sue writes -- has an implicit desire on the part of the author to become part of the fictional world being written about; but not all fanfic has that, and that tangible desire turns up in non-fanfic stories as well.

My only problem with her writing fanfic per se is that she's so bad at it: regrettable, surely, but not a prosecutable offense.

If only bad fiction were a prosecutable offense. I've read some stuff that makes me wonder just how much do I really oppose capital punishment. I realize there would be fundamental problems in determining what is and is not objectively punishable, given fiction's inherent subjective quality, however, I believe I've come up with a quite simple solution: Appoint me as sole judge and jury to the court of bad fiction. Given the possible repercussions of such an appointment, it would have to be a lifetime offer with a guaranteed salary for life so that politicians and the unruly mob that is the public would not be able to attempt to sway my opinion with monetary threats. I know such a thing would be a heavy burden, but for the small sum of a six figure salary, plus perks (list to follow) including Secret Service protection from physical threats, I'd be willing to dedicate myself to this sorely needed public service. Vote now.

Greg, there's this waiting list...

there's this waiting list...

aw shoot. I better go tell my boss I was only kidding about the two weeks notice....

TNH: I still can't quite believe that a working editor with a degree in Journalism could pull a stunt like that.

I think it depends on what you mean by "working editor". Lori's other Amazon credit is editor for 2001's My Search for the Son of Sam, published by Writer's Club Press/iUniverse (POD).

Not only is there a waiting list, but you can't get on it without proving yourself by serving four or five years on the Crappy Folk Music Squad.

Or the Lousy Potato Salad Team.

Greg: Appoint me as sole judge and jury to the court of bad fiction.

You want to be Oprah?

Or the Lousy Potato Salad Team.

I got food poisoning after eating some street-vendor food in Tijuana. Does that count?

Fiction, Folk Music, and Potato salad are all taken? Fine, then put me on the "Bad Figs and Dates Detection Team for Wayward Adventurers" and add a large supply of monkeys to my perk list.

It's 3pm PST and it's still up on Amazon. Its ranking is dropping nicely, though, and the reviewers both gave it one star (although I'm wondering about the one who did it strictly on writing quality: didn't they notice the lack of permissions from Lucasfilm?).

Well, I don't have much luck with bets.

M. Planchet-

Should you have occasion soon to speak with His Lordship Your Downstairs Neighbor, would you be so kind as to pass along that one M. Ducasse has just come into awareness of the idea of "Real Person Slash," and would the honorable Marquis be interested? - Though I hasten to add that it is possible Monsieur le Comte has misunderstood the term.

M. Layman-Kennedy:

As a General Dogsbody, I am always glad to introduce persons of quality to one another, for a most modest considertation. And as M. le Marquis has never, in my admittedly limited experience of him, refused an introduction