Can someone tell me what powers totalitarian leaders had that Bush doesn't claim?
... I'm thinking.
Really, I think we all share the wish that we as a country were still working towards the America of our myths rather than watching it be systematically dismantled.
In the mind of some fans, stealing an idea without permission/without credit is A Very Bad Thing and can result in a major fan-wank.
I find it a bit ironic.
In my experience, the big uproars are usually caused by outright plagiarism -- posting someone else's story with your (generic you) name on it or lifting enough identifiable text from another story that, were it an academic paper, you'd be required to cite source.
There are occasional "idea-lifting" accusations that range from thought-provoking* to downright ridiculous, like the assertion that any X-Men fic that involves characters gasp baking gingerbread at Christmas must have been plagiarized because only one person could ever have had that idea! These folks are roundly and rightly mocked.
Keep in mind that, as Teresa has pointed out, fanfic generally operates as a gift economy and the only "pay" a writer receives is in the form of thank-you comments or (bliss!) the occasional constructive feedback. And as we're for the most part careful to cite our original inspirations -- right down to noting when a story contains canon dialogue -- why not expect fellow fanficcers to do the same?
And as for translation-kerfuffles, keep in mind that a large subset of fanfic is sexually explicit. Given different political climates and attitudes towards/legislation regarding sexual material, I can think of a number of stories of my own that I would not want popping up on boards in, say, China. Or Australia, for that matter, though translation is not at issue there.
* Thought-provoking in the same way "fair use" debates are, where we're attempting to parse degrees of similarity in plot, setting, non-canon characters, etc.
Having read a number of folk here say they read fanfic before seeing a movie, I'm surprised that the fanfic didn't have spoiler alerts or that the fanfic culture in general hasn't adopted some similar type of warning.
Err, it does. For one, it is highly improbable (I know better than to speak of impossibilities, I do) that someone read a fanfic based on a movie or novel with no indication what movie or novel it was based on, as most stories list "fandom" in the header and/or are sorted by fandom category on their archive or website of origin. For TV series or movies-and-books-with-sequels, there's usually a spot for a notation such as "Spoilers: up to and including Clone Wars" or "Spoilers through season 5, episode 4."
I'm surfing at the office and so maybe haven't been reading as closely as I should, but I don't recall where anyone here mentioned reading a fanfic before seeing the source by accident.
I'm sure there's someone around who can cite this better, but as I recall the MZB lawsuit related to a Darkover novel that allegedly contained plot or character elements similar to a fanfic that was submitted to her magazine, i.e., one that MZB could be assumed to have access to prior to writing her novel.
The moral being, if you as an author become aware of fanfic for a universe you have any intention of continuing to write in, for crying out loud stay away from the fanfic. This is also reportedly why the Babylon 5 newsgroup spawned a moderated subgroup, so JMS could participate with some level of protection against random passersby lobbing episode "suggestions" at him that he would then be obligated not to use.
... *tilts head and tries to parse that paragraph again*
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