I’ve no problem with Miss Hegemann claiming to be the “arranger,” the same as I don’t mind my songs being recorded by others in unique arrangements. The problem is that an “arranger” is not a “composer” or “creator”, and should not be considered so. For me, I don’t mind if an “arranger” makes money from their new and original arrangement of my music (although I would take issue with uses in direct contradiction to my intended use, an example of which is cited above as the use of Arien’s book to support Nazism), but, I do want to be compensated and credited as the writer in accordance with current copyright standards.

I understand that current mechanisms are not in existence in print issues, but as music mashups are the analogy you use, perhaps that is the answer to this whole issue (as first put forth above by Simon Friehofner and again referred to by Scrape): establish a statutory licensing rate for print as they do for music, with creators having the right to negotiate higher or lower rates to their satisfaction. I don’t know about you, but most of the creators I know are struggling to survive in the current economic climate, and many creative endeavors are being cancelled if not severely curtailed as a result.

Back when MC Hammer first plagiarized Rick James’ “Superfreak”, it was obvious to me that Mr. James’ had spent a lot of money (let alone time) in the production of the original version. For him to not be able to recoup some of his investment while someone reaped huge financial rewards from that same investment goes against every fiber of my being. If Hammer had reproduced (as in from scratch) the hook, I’m not sure that it would have been as easily recognizable or of comparable quality, which means that he made money from someone else’s efforts. While that is fine in the case of an employee/employer relationship, no such relationship existed.

I’m searching for an analogy that would make sense to someone outside of the “choir”, but until someone is directly affected by such theft, they rarely understand it. Perhaps if someone came by your home and borrowed your car (without your permission mind you) in order to make money by using your car as a taxi without compensating you I would come close to capturing the essence of it. Although you’ve never met this person, and you alone have worked and labored to pay the price of that vehicle, they now claim they have the right to use it, simply because you parked it in a public place. Worse still would be if they actually sold your vehicle in order to reap the profits and/or let each of their friends take it out for a drive as well.

My overriding concerns in this whole issue are fairness and economic survival. The intentional use and misuse of others’ works for financial gain at the expense of the originator is unfair, and should be illegal. Not just the theft of my lyrics and melodies, but the theft of the things that I have invested hard-earned cash in, such as studio time, studio musicians, marketing and promotion, etc, etc, etc.

The whole point of mashups is letting people know which songs you used, so you can crow about your eclectic tastes, or the sharpness of your ear in plucking choice samples and placing them alongside each other. The joy in listening to mashups is when you know the original songs! “I never thought that lyric would go with that music!” is an awesome feeling when it’s done right. If the DJ doing the mashup claimed that he just recorded the whole mashup in a studio with a live band, THAT would be equivalent to literary plagiarism, and THAT is ridiculous.

There are people outside of the “choir” you could preach to who would listen, but this sort of disingenuous comparison is going against what I hope you want, which is to convince people who aren’t already obeying copyright law into doing so.

Example 1, I called my mom from a payphone to say I was fine in Hollywood in 1984 but police responding to a murder surrounded the phone booth drowning me out. I wrote it up in a movie script read by Cathryn Wyler at Columbia Pictures. She passed on the script but “talked it over with colleagues.” One colleague, Mary Ann Page, shows up in an interview in Syd Fields “How to Sell Your Screenplay” as having moved from Columbia to Raystar Productions and working on “The Secret of my Success”. You can see this scene today at imdb.com throughout the first six seconds of the movie trailer, Michael J. Fox calls his mom from a payphone to say he’s fine and is drowned out by a bunch of cops responding to a crime. Okay, they switched it from LA to NYC, and from a serious film to a comedy.
Example 2, I wrote a script on a group of WW2 soldiers fighting the macabre battle at Remagen Bridge and pitched this copyrighted work to Hollywood boutique agent Jon Klane who said “World War Two is DOA in Hollywood.” Sixteen months later Pearl Harbor came out and Klane sold a “pitch” (no script) to New Line Cinema for his two client writers to create, for 750,000 dollars. It was about a group of soldiers sent to fight the Germans at “a very important bridge”. Gee, where did he come into that? I could explain more detail but those not in denial will get my point. There are the haves and the have nots, and our job is to consume what they produce – not to pretend to the throne.

You misunderstand my argument (though I’m not sure I’d label what I was presenting an “argument”, to begin with). I was pointing out the contrast in cultures – that is, mindsets. In the US and others, you’d have to be out of your mind to sell for profit a shallow derivative work that you lack legally-binding consent from the copyright holder for. In Japan (at least for this pair of industries), it’s assumed that the authors/publishers are okay with this without ever asking, as this is the rule, not the very rare exception. For the purpose of clarity, let me reiterate: usually they do not seek/receive legal consent from the copyright holders.

Phrased alternately, here everybody cares about their copyright; creators rarely give permission for commercial ventures without some kind of royalty payments, and publishers even less often. In Japan, commercial use of copyright without royalties is a daily occurrence; the stuff is sold on the shelves of stores right next to the original material, and very few creators/publishers care.

The contrast is less “stark” than it is “blinding”.

This view that writing in another universe is somehow inferior is what I was addressing. Sure, lots of fanfic is bad. But that doesn’t make it somehow less of a creative act. Look, for instance, at Grendel (John Gardner) or Wicked (Gregory Maguire). Both are stories told in someone else’s universe which explore the characters in new ways. Would they not have a place in a writing contest? Are they not original? What’s the difference?

I think this attitude is most common in people with JW’s opinion that there exists an “undeniable right of the individual artist or author to protect their works from being used in a repugnant manner.”

Where does this right stem from? I’m a big believer in attribution, but I hardly think authorial moral rights are “undeniable.” From an American perspective, they’re fairly incompatible with the First Amendment right to free speech, which I would argue is a much more important right for a society. I love seeing artists works used in new and interesting ways.

You don’t realize that you killed your own argument. It is in violation of US copyright. No ifs, ands. or buts about it. But where you lost it entirely was where you admitted the Japanese creators give their PERMISSION for the fan fic. If US creators give permission, fan fic is fine here, too. With permission of the rights owner, it’s legal…period.

And it does happen, from time to time, even in the US. In one gaming book I have in the works, the permission to create scenarios for non-commercial use with the gaming specs I create is clearly stated. Not available yet…but stated, when the book becomes available.

Brenna

You’re right on some things and wrong on others.

Yes, the laws we’re talking about are US laws, because Patrick works in the US policy-making scene.

Unfortunately for some of us (the headaches of it!), we work in a worldwide market. Personally, I am a US author but have one UK publisher and a former Canadian publisher, in my backlist of a dozen or so. And I have been contacted by readers from Pakistan, Germany, Portugal, and so forth. That always complicates the game.

To truly understand the implications for the situation, I would have to find out what the laws are for BOTH the country of the original book Arien wrote and the German laws (if different) and further whether both countries are Berne.

Why? Because of the following. If this young woman tried the same thing with an American book, she would find herself dealing with US Copyright Law, via the Berne. According to the Copyright Circ 38 at http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ38a.pdf, Germany is a Berne country and SHOULD require respect of US Copyright Law when she’s quoting from a US Book. In fact, she should be required to respect the copyright laws of ANY Berne nation. It’s a messy system, I admit, but it’s not impossible to navigate.

But, from a purely American standpoint (hey…play with what you know), what she did was deplorable. For that matter, from a writer’s seat, what she did was deplorable. Someone asked, and that’s my opinion of it.

Now, what are you COMPLETELY wrong about? That there is implicit permission for people to use your work as they see fit. Now, am I going to begrudge people writing fan fic in my world? As long as they aren’t being offensive with it or trying to make money from it…play. I’m not unreasonable about it, but cross the line, and I will say something. That’s how it works.

Brenna

Teams of authors are not fan fic. Never have been. If they are writing something original, it’s still original, even if it’s a writing team doing the work and spitballing off each other as part of the creative process. There’s nothing wrong with that, and there are some very famous writing teams at work in the world. Where you got the idea to connect this to fan fic is beyond me.

I think you might be talking about “working on spec” for a licensed world. While people use the established world rules and world and even some characters in a licensed world, they are also creating in the world. BUT, they don’t own what they create, and they don’t have full creative say over it, either. That’s what writing on spec is. The result is approved, tweaked, or rejected outright by the continuity team that licenses the world, in total, to make sure they approve of where you intend to take the world bible. In many ways, this is not original creation, since you are legally building on someone else’s established world. Your portion of it is, but only as far as the creative team above you allows it to be.

Now, mind you, if they reject what you wrote on spec (because it didn’t match the outline you gave them or you couldn’t keep quality up through the whole thing), it becomes useless to you. You can cannibalize pieces of your OWN work into something new, but you cannot take the licensed world information into the new creation without facing lawsuit, and the book cannot stand alone without the licensed world input into it. Or if it can, that may be why you were rejected, in the first place.

So, from that POV, while you can create a certain amount of original work in fan fic, you are NOT creating the whole thing. So, no… I don’t consider it completely original work and certainly not something to enter in a writing contest.

Brenna