Stealing from fellow fans - don't do it
Apr. 30th, 2003 11:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thebratqueenI've ranted before about stealing from your fellow fans, but the topic has come up again with people still scratching their heads as to why swiping someone's icons/vids/fanart/fanfic is an asstastic thing to do. Heck, even those who agree that this kind of theft sucks can't even seem to find the words to explain why beyond "Well, it's rude." So let me try to break it down for y'all in words of mostly one syllable or less:
NO ONE THINKS I'M JOSS WHEDON
What do I mean by that?
People who don't get why stealing icons et al. (which from now on I'm going to call fanwork to cover the spectrum without having to write it out constantly) from your fellow fans is wrong typically say "Well you already stole from the copyright holders, so what right do you have to bitch?"
Well here's my right: I don't steal Joss Whedon's money. I don't steal his profits. I don't steal his hard work. I don't go around and claim that I am the person who created Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I don't take episodes that he has made and sell them. I don't take the thing that he has created and in any way claim it for my own.
What I do do is comment on it.
Now how welcome my comments are varies depending on the creator or what part of their machine I'm talking to. Joss loves fanfic. Fox doesn't. JK Rowling loves it, Warner Brothers does not.
Is fanfic et al. a violation of copyright by the definition of the law? Well some of the top copyright lawyers in the US have differing opinions about that, all of which boil down to "it depends on the judge you get".
But we're not talking about the law at the moment - which, without any fanwork cases having come to court has no precedent by which to say how this would go down. What we are talking about is this so-called double standard of fanworkers not wanting their stuff stolen. And what I am telling you is that it is not a double standard.
When we make our fanwork nobody mistakes us for the original. It is very clear where the copyright belongs and where the source material comes from. It is obvious that we are only commenting on someone else's hard work.
When somebody steals from us that's no longer obvious.
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lerefuge does collages. She uses screencaps and promo shots from the shows that she likes in order to do them. Nobody looking at her collages would think that she is actually a member of Mutant Enemy or whatever company does SG-1. They think that she is a fan of their shows using her talent to show her appreciation for the shows she loves. People then give her feedback based on the work she did which is the time, talent and effort necessary to create a beautiful collage.
If somebody swipes one of her collages, files her name off of it and claims it as their own they have now stolen her time, talent and effort. Moreover, they've done so without even giving her credit for what she did. Everybody knows a screenshot of Xander ultimately belongs to Mutant Enemy. You cannot be in the Buffy fandom without being aware of that. You can, however, be in the Buffy fandom without knowinglerefuge's work when you see it. To show her work without giving her credit or, worse, flat-out claiming it for your own is to have stolen from her. You did not put the effort into making the collage, she did.
If someone takes one of her collages, chops it, changes the color and then makes it into an lJ icon, does it then become "theirs"? Still no. At least, not entirely. Because again - credit for the source material. As before we still know that Spike belongs to Mutant Enemy. We can see any picture of Spike and know where credit for him belongs. But if your jumping off point comes after the work thatlerefuge did then you have still stolen her time and work. You can claim credit for the time and work you did, certainly, but not for hers.
Same thing with vids.sisabet makes a Buffyverse vid. All clips in that vid clearly belong to Mutant Enemy. We watch the vid and we know this. The song of the vid belongs to the artist and their record label. We know that too. To my knowledge, nobody has ever mistaken Sisabet for Trent Reznor (as for example). Sisabet doesn't claim to have created the song, nor the television shows she is doing a vid of. She does claim, however, all the work she did in collecting the clips, organizing them, cleaning them up as needed to make them vid-usable and then putting them all together to make the vid itself.
If somebody comes along and swipes clips from one of her vids then they have stolen from her. Mutant Enemy and Trent Reznor are in the same place they always were - still getting all the credit they deserve for the work they did. Sisabet, however, has been robbed. Unless someone has seen her vids first nobody would know that a certain cut or order of scenes was her idea and hard work. If someone's vid jumping off point is after work that Sisabet did, then she deserves credit for that work.
Same thing with fanfic. I write stories. Nobody thinks I own Wes and Angel. On the odd chance any of my readers are retarded I make sure this is clear by putting in disclaimers. Mutant Enemy gets the credit they deserve for the work that they did. All I claim credit for is the work I did, which is writing a story about the characters. To that extent, it is original work. I don't, for example, swipe entire paragraphs of dialogue from the show, I make my own.
If, on the other hand, someone has swiped entire paragraphs of dialogue from me then they've stolen from me, just as I would have stolen from the show if I had swiped dialogue from it. Doing so means stealing from someone else's hard work.
Could someone take an idea from one of my stories and make a story of their own based on that? Sure! That's not stealing from me. That's doing the same thing I did to the show. This has happened to me on more than one occasion and I am fine with it. Heck, I'm even flattered. Sometimes people ask me beforehand if it's okay, othertimes they don't. It's nice when they ask (I always say yes) and I don't flip a bitch when they don't. Reason being we're on the same page. We're not taking what doesn't belong to us.
I could go on but you get the idea. It's the same for any form of fanwork. We here in fandom believe in giving credit where it is due. Our source material always gets credit. It's impossible for it not to. Our work, on the other hand, can sadly get lost in the shuffle if somebody steals from us and doesn't even give us so much as a footnote to say thanks.
You like what we do? Great. Give us credit for it. Don't repay our blood, sweat and tears by using a five-finger discount. If you like it then remember rules even my 2 year old neice knows: Say please, say thank you and respect the word "mine".
NO ONE THINKS I'M JOSS WHEDON
What do I mean by that?
People who don't get why stealing icons et al. (which from now on I'm going to call fanwork to cover the spectrum without having to write it out constantly) from your fellow fans is wrong typically say "Well you already stole from the copyright holders, so what right do you have to bitch?"
Well here's my right: I don't steal Joss Whedon's money. I don't steal his profits. I don't steal his hard work. I don't go around and claim that I am the person who created Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I don't take episodes that he has made and sell them. I don't take the thing that he has created and in any way claim it for my own.
What I do do is comment on it.
Now how welcome my comments are varies depending on the creator or what part of their machine I'm talking to. Joss loves fanfic. Fox doesn't. JK Rowling loves it, Warner Brothers does not.
Is fanfic et al. a violation of copyright by the definition of the law? Well some of the top copyright lawyers in the US have differing opinions about that, all of which boil down to "it depends on the judge you get".
But we're not talking about the law at the moment - which, without any fanwork cases having come to court has no precedent by which to say how this would go down. What we are talking about is this so-called double standard of fanworkers not wanting their stuff stolen. And what I am telling you is that it is not a double standard.
When we make our fanwork nobody mistakes us for the original. It is very clear where the copyright belongs and where the source material comes from. It is obvious that we are only commenting on someone else's hard work.
When somebody steals from us that's no longer obvious.
lerefuge does collages. She uses screencaps and promo shots from the shows that she likes in order to do them. Nobody looking at her collages would think that she is actually a member of Mutant Enemy or whatever company does SG-1. They think that she is a fan of their shows using her talent to show her appreciation for the shows she loves. People then give her feedback based on the work she did which is the time, talent and effort necessary to create a beautiful collage.If somebody swipes one of her collages, files her name off of it and claims it as their own they have now stolen her time, talent and effort. Moreover, they've done so without even giving her credit for what she did. Everybody knows a screenshot of Xander ultimately belongs to Mutant Enemy. You cannot be in the Buffy fandom without being aware of that. You can, however, be in the Buffy fandom without knowing
lerefuge's work when you see it. To show her work without giving her credit or, worse, flat-out claiming it for your own is to have stolen from her. You did not put the effort into making the collage, she did.If someone takes one of her collages, chops it, changes the color and then makes it into an lJ icon, does it then become "theirs"? Still no. At least, not entirely. Because again - credit for the source material. As before we still know that Spike belongs to Mutant Enemy. We can see any picture of Spike and know where credit for him belongs. But if your jumping off point comes after the work that
lerefuge did then you have still stolen her time and work. You can claim credit for the time and work you did, certainly, but not for hers.Same thing with vids.
sisabet makes a Buffyverse vid. All clips in that vid clearly belong to Mutant Enemy. We watch the vid and we know this. The song of the vid belongs to the artist and their record label. We know that too. To my knowledge, nobody has ever mistaken Sisabet for Trent Reznor (as for example). Sisabet doesn't claim to have created the song, nor the television shows she is doing a vid of. She does claim, however, all the work she did in collecting the clips, organizing them, cleaning them up as needed to make them vid-usable and then putting them all together to make the vid itself.If somebody comes along and swipes clips from one of her vids then they have stolen from her. Mutant Enemy and Trent Reznor are in the same place they always were - still getting all the credit they deserve for the work they did. Sisabet, however, has been robbed. Unless someone has seen her vids first nobody would know that a certain cut or order of scenes was her idea and hard work. If someone's vid jumping off point is after work that Sisabet did, then she deserves credit for that work.
Same thing with fanfic. I write stories. Nobody thinks I own Wes and Angel. On the odd chance any of my readers are retarded I make sure this is clear by putting in disclaimers. Mutant Enemy gets the credit they deserve for the work that they did. All I claim credit for is the work I did, which is writing a story about the characters. To that extent, it is original work. I don't, for example, swipe entire paragraphs of dialogue from the show, I make my own.
If, on the other hand, someone has swiped entire paragraphs of dialogue from me then they've stolen from me, just as I would have stolen from the show if I had swiped dialogue from it. Doing so means stealing from someone else's hard work.
Could someone take an idea from one of my stories and make a story of their own based on that? Sure! That's not stealing from me. That's doing the same thing I did to the show. This has happened to me on more than one occasion and I am fine with it. Heck, I'm even flattered. Sometimes people ask me beforehand if it's okay, othertimes they don't. It's nice when they ask (I always say yes) and I don't flip a bitch when they don't. Reason being we're on the same page. We're not taking what doesn't belong to us.
I could go on but you get the idea. It's the same for any form of fanwork. We here in fandom believe in giving credit where it is due. Our source material always gets credit. It's impossible for it not to. Our work, on the other hand, can sadly get lost in the shuffle if somebody steals from us and doesn't even give us so much as a footnote to say thanks.
You like what we do? Great. Give us credit for it. Don't repay our blood, sweat and tears by using a five-finger discount. If you like it then remember rules even my 2 year old neice knows: Say please, say thank you and respect the word "mine".
