Lots of People Make Money on Fanfic. Just Not the Authors
Fanbinding has exploded in reputation up to now few years. Many fanbinders do adhere to a strict gift-economy stance according to the writers they’re binding the work of, usually limiting cash they gather, if any, to overlaying materials prices. But the folks promoting sure variations of well-liked fics for revenue are reduce from a distinct (e-book)fabric. As they become profitable off works the authors themselves can not promote, they’re placing these authors—and, arguably, fanfiction itself—in an untenable place.
“Technically speaking, the reproduction right belongs to the author of the fic, because that’s the ‘copy right’: They are the only person with the right to make copies of the fic,” says Stacey Lantagne, a copyright lawyer who makes a speciality of fanfiction and teaches at Western New England University School of Law. Even although she notes it “might be considered an unsettled question of law officially,” fic authors do maintain the copyright to the unique elements of their tales, although after all not the underlying supply materials.
Is it authorized to bind another person’s fic? “Here is a typical lawyer answer: it depends,” Lantagne jokes. She says “it is likely legal to print someone else’s fanfic for your own personal, noncommercial use,” including that would doubtless prolong to paying materials prices for another person to bind it, too. “Noncommercial” right here is essential. Like the authorized standing of fanfiction itself, the legality of fanbinding rests on truthful use, the exception beneath US copyright regulation decided by components like how transformative a piece is, or if somebody is profiting off it—and taking cash away from the rights holder within the course of.
Fanfiction communities have traditionally relied on good-faith communication relating to doing one thing else with somebody’s fic. Nothing’s stopping you from translating, or remixing, or creating an audio model (often known as podficcing), or, sure, printing and binding a model, nevertheless it’s good in the event you ask first. Some writers submit blanket permissions permitting any noncommercial engagement with their works, and a few, particularly in these hyper-popular corners of fandom, have particular steerage about fanbinding. Last 12 months, a charity public sale that garnered enormous sums of cash to bind others’ work led some writers—SenLinYu included—to switch their insurance policies to permit private, noncommercial fanbinding solely.
While loads of followers have revered their needs, there may be clearly demand for these books—and thus, continued provide. Lantagne says that since litigation is extraordinarily costly, the one recourse a fanfiction author doubtless has on this scenario is to file DMCA takedown notices, a really tedious course of when there are a number of sellers on a number of websites. “This is what copyright holders have been complaining about ever since the DMCA was passed in the late 1990s—it’s a pain to have to file a DMCA notice everywhere copyright infringement crops up,” she says. “However, the alternative is something like YouTube’s Content ID being used to automatically block uploads, which we know is notoriously bad at accounting for fair use.”
Although unlawful sellers clearly deserve an excellent portion of blame, that continued demand—no matter fic authors’ needs—speaks to the best way each scale and cash has been altering the fanfiction world in recent times. To be clear, there was by no means one singular “fanfiction community” or common set of norms, however the extensively accepted gift-economy framing has at all times been undergirded by the truth that many fanfiction readers are additionally writers, and tales are shared inside fandoms, with all of the structural ties they create. Pulling-to-publish was usually framed as a betrayal—we had been all on this non-monetized boat collectively, and now you’ve jumped ship and cashed in.
