Continuations by people other than the original author/creator aren't worth getting worked up about.

[Kelliezgirl]

You could have fooled me, what with your previous comments indicating otherwise.


Perhaps, but ethical arguments have their place in discussions. After all, a lot of law is intended to replicate ethics and are written by people who are sworn to follow a code of ethics.

Also, the comment of yours that I replied to was the one where you claimed there were no legal arguments being made. I was pointing out the untruth of that particular bit, not claiming that all of the arguments were strictly legal in nature.


That's kind of funny, as I was pointing out to you that fair use is more complicated than you were making it out to be.

Which previous comments of mine indicated I wasn't aware of the existence of copyright?

As I've said, people here are making ethical arguments. Not legal ones. I can absolutely use your characters under fair use.
And I don't have to admit guilt to anything to do so.

Whether or not I SHOULD do that is an ethical argument, which is what we are having here.

Your presumption seems to be if I don't write a 5000 word law review article with citations then I must not know about something is a ridiculous standard. We are having a broad based, general conversation here. The fact that people don't go into particular (and in this case often irrelevant) details doesn't mean they aren't aware of the existence of that information.

And, as I have said previously, there is nothing to be gained by having a legal argument about this topic, legally you can do it. That's pretty cut and dried or the whole Fan Fic section wouldn't be here.
The question is one of ethics.
So, if you want to argue about law... good luck with that.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

Mark Twain, you say?

Unauthorised editions were so much a problem for him that he travelled between the USA, UK and Canada to secure copyright for his works in each country. Think about the trouble and expense of having to make a trans-Atlantic trip every time you wanted to publish a book. Think of what more he could've written instead of faffing around establishing copyrights in multiple continents.

Piracy caused him so much grief that he considered giving up writing books.

Instead, he ended up lobbying legislatures in the USA and UK to establish international copyright laws, and was later recognised by the American Bar Association as "so greatly responsible for the laws relating to copyrights which have meant so much to all free peoples throughout the world".

https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2014/09/mark-twain-copyright/

Dickens was also outraged by American piracy of his works; he advocated for international copyright laws during his US tours, and Nicholas Nickleby features a speech where Nicholas denounced piracy.

https://foleyhoag.com/news-and-insi...nd-copyright-law-five-things-you-should-know/

Experiences like theirs are precisely why the Berne Convention exists.

But it didn't stop either of them from writing.
So, my point stands.

I'll just assume you missed the part where I said I was in favor of copyright, since you were in such a hurry to try and prove someone wrong.
Good effort though.

 

[VerbalAbuse]

this is an important conversation and it was about time we had it.

 

[IWroteThis]

Which previous comments of mine indicated I wasn't aware of the existence of copyright?

Way to ignore half of your own sentence to avoid my real point.

As I've said, people here are making ethical arguments. Not legal ones. I can absolutely use your characters under fair use.
And I don't have to admit guilt to anything to do so.

Yes, you do. You can't claim that your usage falls under fair use without admitting that you used it. Once again, that's how affirmative defenses work. Don't take my word for it, because it's not just me saying it. Do a minute's worth of research and you'll find multiple confirmations that fair use is an affirmative defense.

Whether or not I SHOULD do that is an ethical argument, which is what we are having here.

Whether or not you should obey a law is an ethical argument, but that doesn't mean it's isolated from the law in question.

Your presumption seems to be if I don't write a 5000 word law review article with citations then I must not know about something is a ridiculous standard. We are having a broad based, general conversation here. The fact that people don't go into particular (and in this case often irrelevant) details doesn't mean they aren't aware of the existence of that information.

No, your presumption seems to be something along the lines of mistakenly thinking you understand what I said. Either that, or presuming you're entitled to change the meaning of what I said.

And, as I have said previously, there is nothing to be gained by having a legal argument about this topic, legally you can do it.

You can only do it legally if you meet certain stipulations. Fair Use is not a blank check. Once again, it's more complicated than you're making it out to be.

That's pretty cut and dried or the whole Fan Fic section wouldn't be here.

If by "cut and dried" you mean the requirements for fair use are codified in a somewhat understandable manner, yes. If you mean it's the free-for-all you claim it is, no.

The question is one of ethics.

Once again, yes, the question of whether or not you choose to follow the law is one of ethics. You cannot fully discuss the ethics of anything without including that.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

this is an important conversation and it was about time we had it.

Had it for the 300th or so time it seems.
But apparently some of us don't even know copyright exists. Wild, huh?

 

[ElectricBlue]

You write urban stories set in trains and cafes, right? Do you make up all your own cities and train companies? Like, obviously not, right? Unless you go the full Tolkien, your setting is going to be using "characters" that you didn't write. Just opening your work "Meet Me On The Five Thirty Train," I spot Endgate, Southwest Airlines, and British Airways: three "characters" you didn't write before I even scroll the page.

As Simon says above, they're not characters, they're places or brand names.

What you're saying, in effect, is that you can't set a story in London because you appear to think someone "owns" the rights to a city name. Which is clearly a nonsense. Your comment suggests to me you don't quite understand copyright. To be pedantic, those company names are likely Trademarked, which is something else again - but my use isn't a breach of an individual copyright.

As an aside, in the unnamed city that story is set in, Endgate is a completely fictional name for a station. There might be an Endgate somewhere, but not in the real city that informs that slice of fiction.

Borrowing from real world sources is not more creative than borrowing from fictional ones. You don't own those places, those logos, those companies. You include them in your story because you're writing a story about people and not writing a whole urban fantasy setting from scratch. How is that better or different than someone putting Spiderman in their story?

Because as Simon says - Spiderman is the character, some other writer created him.

Also, real places haven't been invented, as Tolkien did with Mordor.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

Yes, you do. You can't claim that your usage falls under fair use without admitting that you used it. Once again, that's how affirmative defenses work. Don't take my word for it, because it's not just me saying it. Do a minute's worth of research and you'll find multiple confirmations that fair use is an affirmative defense.

Admitting you used something isn't admitting you violated copyright. The affirmative defense is, "it was OK for me to do this because it was covered under fair use."

You're shifting the goalposts.

 

[ElectricBlue]

this is an important conversation and it was about time we had it.

It's a conversation that comes up repeatedly, and always gets derailed by the legal arguments, as this thread has done.

What should be on the table, front and centre, are the ethics involved in using someone else's story without their permission. That's what's important, in my mind.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

It's a conversation that comes up repeatedly, and always gets derailed by the legal arguments, as this thread has done.

What should be on the table, front and centre, are the ethics involved in using someone else's story without their permission. That's what's important, in my mind.

Exactly.

 

[IWroteThis]

Admitting you used something isn't admitting you violated copyright. The affirmative defense is, "it was OK for me to do this because it was covered under fair use."

Yes, it is. If it wasn't, it wouldn't be an affirmative defense. You don't just say, "It's fair use," and sit back down with a smirk. As an affirmative defense, the burden of proof shifts from the copyright holder to you, because you're not claiming you didn't do it, but that you were justified and compliant with the law when you did it.

Once again, it's not as simple as you keep claiming it is.

You're shifting the goalposts.

Not sorry, but no. I'm just following your lead as you wander around.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

Yes, it is. If it wasn't, it wouldn't be an affirmative defense. You don't just say, "It's fair use," and sit back down with a smirk. As an affirmative defense, the burden of proof shifts from the copyright holder to you, because you're not claiming you didn't do it, but that you were justified and compliant with the law when you did it.

Once again, it's not as simple as you keep claiming it is.


Not sorry, but no. I'm just following your lead as you wander around.

No one is claiming you can just say fair use and smirk.


You don't seem to understand that saying
"I used this material"

Is different than saying

"I violated copyright law".

You are saying, "I used the material, and it was legal under the fair use doctrine."

Let me give you another example.

In Civil cases (and copyright is a civil matter) one asserts Statute of Limitations as an affirmative defense.
You don't just say "statute of limitations" and sit back and smirk. You make a case as to why it's relevant.

If the court decides against you on that issue, they don't automatically find against you in the matter of the tort. Now you go to trial on the facts of the case.

Because asserting an affirmative defense is NOT an admission of guilt in civil law.


But, the greater point you don't seem to understand is that fan fiction is legal.

https://legalclarity.org/is-fan-fiction-legal-under-copyright-law/

No U.S. court has ever ruled that non-commercial, transformative fan fiction constitutes copyright infringement.

https://jipel.law.nyu.edu/is-fanfiction-legal/


So, again, it's perfectly legal for me to use your characters in my own fan fiction story.
If it's ETHICAL to do so is another matter entirely.

 

[RocketGrunt]

What you're saying, in effect, is that you can't set a story in London because you appear to think someone "owns" the rights to a city name. Which is clearly a nonsense. Your comment suggests to me you don't quite understand copyright. To be pedantic, those company names are likely Trademarked, which is something else again - but my use isn't a breach of an individual copyright.

As an aside, in the unnamed city that story is set in, Endgate is a completely fictional name for a station. There might be an Endgate somewhere, but not in the real city that informs that slice of fiction.

Because as Simon says - Spiderman is the character, some other writer created him.

Also, real places haven't been invented, as Tolkien did with Mordor.

No. I'm saying that ONLY people who go full Tolkien and design their own world, their own languages, their own cities, their own mythologies, their own magic, and their own characters have an actual claim to be using entirely original work. Everyone else, very much including every single person who sets their stories on "Earth" is using material that they didn't write. And I am saying that there is ZERO difference between using something you didn't write from a real-world source as from using something you didn't write from a fictional source. Setting a story in London is not morally different from setting a story in Mordor.

Now from a legal standpoint, Copyright protects only literal text. Copyright does not protect "worlds" or "characters" literally at all. Trademark protects those things. So what this means is that because the copyright on the first Tarzan book has expired, it is not a violation of copyright to publish a word-for-word copy of one of the early Tarzan books. However, the Tarzan character is still trademarked, so it would be a violation of Trademark to do that without changing his name to Gormag or something in every instance.

From an ethical standpoint, plagiarism is unethical. I don't think there's a lot of disagreement on that point. Copying another person's prose and passing it off as your own is unethical. And it continues to be such after the copyright expires and starts being legal.

But what's under question isn't copying other peoples' text. It's about writing stories set in worlds and scenarios other people have written. And copyright does not prevent that at all. Trademark is the thing that prevents that sort of action, and I strongly doubt that anyone writing on Literotica has a case for a trademark on anything.

Most of the stuff people think is protected by copyright genuinely isn't. It's just the actual text. You can write a whole book that has the rules for Dungeons & Dragons in it as long as you don't copy any of the actual text. The rules and procedures of the game are not copyrightable, just the actual prose of explaining those rules. Certain monsters and places are claimed as trademark by Hasbro, but they do not and cannot own the concept of rolling a d20 and adding your strength modifier.

The reason you aren't allowed to write Spiderman stories is because he is a trademarked character. But you're allowed to make Arachnoman who is functionally the same. Because the trademark just protects the actual character. Although it has to be distinct enough that it would "not be confused" with Spiderman in order to be legally distinct for purposes of trademark. It's literally a "trade mark" and the idea is that as long as the customer isn't being tricked into thinking they are buying Spiderman when they are buying Arachnoman, you're in the clear.

Spiderman, Spiderman,
Legally distinct Spiderman,
Using him, might be rude,
But we know, we can't be sued,
He's Legal-ly distinct Spiderman!

--

Wicked is legal because L.Frank Baum's estate no longer has trademark on Oz or Glinda the Good. It is exactly as ethical as any other work that is not a wholly original high fantasy. There is no moral argument that Wicked is OK to make and it is not OK to continue a defunct story off Literotica. The only legal argument would be that someone retains trademark on one or more of the characters or places in their story. And well... good luck with that one.

 

[SimonDoom]

But, the greater point you don't seem to understand is that fan fiction is legal.

https://legalclarity.org/is-fan-fiction-legal-under-copyright-law/

No U.S. court has ever ruled that non-commercial, transformative fan fiction constitutes copyright infringement.

https://jipel.law.nyu.edu/is-fanfiction-legal/


So, again, it's perfectly legal for me to use your characters in my own fan fiction story.
If it's ETHICAL to do so is another matter entirely.

I don't this is accurate, as a statement of current law.

It's equally true to say that no court to date has definitively ruled that noncommercial fanfiction constitutes a fair use of an original work. So, in the absence of a clear court decision on the subject, neither of us can say with confidence whether noncommercial fanfiction is legal or not.

I don't believe, personally, that it generally IS legal, for two reasons.

First of all, most fanfiction is not "transformative," as that term is used by courts that have actually applied the transformative use doctrine. Consider the "Pretty Woman" case, or the "Wind done Gone" case, or the recent Andy Warhol case, or the cases involving the writing of sequels. A sequel, generally speaking, is not a transformative use. It's a derivative work that infringes the original work. "Transformative" typically means a significant change in the way that the material is being used, such as using it in a parody of the original work (Wind Done Gone), or taking a lick from a country-pop song and inserting it into a completely different rap/hip-hop song (the 2Live Crew-Pretty Woman case). A standard sequel doesn't do this. It merely free rides off the popularity and creativity of the original work. Most straight-up sequels are NOT a transformative or fair use.

Second, whether or not a work is noncommercial is merely a factor in determining whether a work is a fair use. It's not a definitive safe harbor. The Supreme Court said in the 2023 Warhol case, "The commercial nature of the use is not dispositive." So you can't feel absolutely safe from legal action just because you're not making money from your story. The author probably won't go after you. But if they did, I wouldn't put my money on you in a legal battle.

The main reason for the lack of published case decisions is that, by and large, famous authors appear to tolerate fan fiction for practical reasons. That doesn't mean it's legal. Anne Rice didn't think it was, and she was zealous about sending cease and desist letters to fanfiction authors. Those stories were generally taken down, and some sites prohibited Anne Rice fanfiction. We can infer from industry behavior that online publishers are uncertain about the legal status of fanfiction, and that they may take it down if presented by a legal threat from a specific author. If they are uncertain, you should be, too.

Literotica's policy is that it will remove a fanfiction story if it receives a demand from the copyright owner. You can infer that they believe it's a gray area as well.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Now from a legal standpoint, Copyright protects only literal text. Copyright does not protect "worlds" or "characters" literally at all.

This isn't correct. Characters who are sufficiently distinct can indeed be protected by copyright: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_protection_for_fictional_characters

Re. copyright protection for "worlds", cf. The Tolkien Trust v. Demetrious Polychron: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/67464617/47/the-tolkien-trust-v-demetrious-polychron/

TLDR: Polychron wrote an unauthorised sequel to LotR and tried to market it to the Tolkien Estate. He was also selling it online. The Tolkien Estate seems to have more or less ignored Polychron until he very unwisely got their attention by suing them for infringing on his sequel with the "Rings of Power" TV series. His suit was tossed out, then the Tolkien Estate sued him for breach of copyright and won.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

I don't this is accurate, as a statement of current law.

It's equally true to say that no court to date has definitively ruled that noncommercial fanfiction constitutes a fair use of an original work. So, in the absence of a clear court decision on the subject, neither of us can say with confidence whether noncommercial fanfiction is legal or not.

I don't believe, personally, that it generally IS legal, for two reasons.

First of all, most fanfiction is not "transformative," as that term is used by courts that have actually applied the transformative use doctrine. Consider the "Pretty Woman" case, or the "Wind done Gone" case, or the recent Andy Warhol case, or the cases involving the writing of sequels. A sequel, generally speaking, is not a transformative use. It's a derivative work that infringes the original work. "Transformative" typically means a significant change in the way that the material is being used, such as using it in a parody of the original work (Wind Done Gone), or taking a lick from a country-pop song and inserting it into a completely different rap/hip-hop song (the 2Live Crew-Pretty Woman case). A standard sequel doesn't do this. It merely free rides off the popularity and creativity of the original work. Most straight-up sequels are NOT a transformative or fair use.

Second, whether or not a work is noncommercial is merely a factor in determining whether a work is a fair use. It's not a definitive safe harbor. The Supreme Court said in the 2023 Warhol case, "The commercial nature of the use is not dispositive." So you can't feel absolutely safe from legal action just because you're not making money from your story. The author probably won't go after you. But if they did, I wouldn't put my money on you in a legal battle.

The main reason for the lack of published case decisions is that, by and large, famous authors appear to tolerate fan fiction for practical reasons. That doesn't mean it's legal. Anne Rice didn't think it was, and she was zealous about sending cease and desist letters to fanfiction authors. Those stories were generally taken down, and some sites prohibited Anne Rice fanfiction. We can infer from industry behavior that online publishers are uncertain about the legal status of fanfiction, and that they may take it down if presented by a legal threat from a specific author. If they are uncertain, you should be, too.

Literotica's policy is that it will remove a fanfiction story if it receives a demand from the copyright owner. You can infer that they believe it's a gray area as well.

Yes... famous authors... but we aren't talking about famous authors.
We are taking about the folks here on Lit.

So, do you seriously suggest that a court would find someone's noncommercial use of someone else's noncommercial story to be a copyright violation?

As I'm sure you're aware one of the biggest tests under fair use is the effect of the use on the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

You're going to claim in court they are hurting the value of something you give away for free?

All the cases you cited were for commercial use, it's an important distinction.
As to sites just taking stuff down when they get a cease and desist letter.
You should know that that has nothing to do with the merits of the case. It's simple defensive on the part of the site owner.
Laurel has zero incentive to get involved with a copyright dispute regardless of the merits. It's easiest, cheapest and safest for her to pull a story. Same for everyone else.

 

[SimonDoom]

Now from a legal standpoint, Copyright protects only literal text. Copyright does not protect "worlds" or "characters" literally at all. Trademark protects those things. So what this means is that because the copyright on the first Tarzan book has expired, it is not a violation of copyright to publish a word-for-word copy of one of the early Tarzan books. However, the Tarzan character is still trademarked, so it would be a violation of Trademark to do that without changing his name to Gormag or something in every instance.

I don't know where people keep getting this idea, because it's not at all true. There are no cases that say that copyright protects only literal text. Copyright protection is very broad. In the case of "literary works," it protects all of the original creative expression, as opposed to ideas. Here's what it says in an article on the US Copyright website:

f you’re a writer, there are a few key things to know about copyright law and the protections available to you.

First, copyright protects original works of authorship, including literary works like books, essays, articles, blogs, and poetry. Generally, works that are considered “literary works” are intended to be read; they are not intended to be performed before an audience like plays, which are considered “works of the performing arts.” Copyright protection does not extend to names, titles, short phrases, ideas, methods, facts, or systems. It does, however, cover specific creative expression. For example, copyright does not protect the general idea of a group of friends who journey on a heroic quest to defeat evil. However, it will protect the creative expression of this idea, like the book A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle. As a copyright owner, you have the right to make, sell, or otherwise distribute copies; adapt the work; and publicly recite or display your work.

Second, you should know that copyright protection exists from the moment an original work is “fixed” in a tangible medium. For writers, fixation occurs when your ideas are written down on paper or typed using a computer, for example. You don’t need to do anything else for your work to be protected by copyright. US Copyright Office

The name and specific personality traits of a character in a book are creative expression, not a mere idea. They belong to the author. If you write your own story using that same character, you are infringing the author's copyright. The burden is on you to prove that it's a fair use, which you won't be able to do, probably, unless your work is a parody or changes the manner of use (such as, maybe, turning a horror story into a slapstick comedy) so much that it's transformative. A mere sequel, or conclusion of someone else's story, is not, by itself, probably transformative.

But what's under question isn't copying other peoples' text. It's about writing stories set in worlds and scenarios other people have written. And copyright does not prevent that at all. Trademark is the thing that prevents that sort of action, and I strongly doubt that anyone writing on Literotica has a case for a trademark on anything.

Not correct. Trademark and copyright protect two completely different kinds of things. Copyright protects an author's creative expression, including worlds, settings, and characters. Trademark protection is limited to uses of another's trademarked slogan, brand name, or image that is used to distinguish their product or service, and only against uses that are likely to cause confusion as to the source or origin.

So, for example, JK Rowling owns the copyright in her Harry Potter novels, and therefore she owns the exclusive literary rights in the character Harry Potter, and all his distinctive traits. If you write your own Harry Potter story, based on that character, you are infringing her copyright. That doesn't mean you can't insert a character named Harry Potter in your story, because it's a reasonably common name and nobody has completely exclusive rights to it. But you can't use a Harry Potter that is recognizably HER Harry Potter.

Meanwhile, Warner Brothers owns multiple registered trademarks in the name Harry Potter in connection with the making of movies, candy, clothing, and a whole line of things. Why do they get to do that? Ordinarily, a book title cannot be trademarked OR copyrighted. They get to do that because there's an exception when you use a name or word/words in a SERIES of books (or movies) and can therefore claim that the name has become a "brand." This is the case with the Harry Potter movies. It prevents you from selling or advertising confusingly similar products or services using the name Harry Potter. But since merely including a character named Harry Potter within your book does not, by itself, involve the advertising of goods or services, it's not necessarily a trademark infringement. It may be a copyright infringement.

 

[SimonDoom]

So, do you seriously suggest that a court would find someone's noncommercial use of someone else's noncommercial story to be a copyright violation?

Yes, I am very confident that they could sue and win. I have no doubt about it whatsoever, if the facts were right.

The author/copyright owner wouldn't be able to recover actual damages, because there are no actual damages. They couldn't recover the infringer's profits, because there are no profits. But if they happened to register the copyright in a timely enough manner (something almost no Literotica author probably ever does, because they don't want to register smut stories in their own actual name), they could get statutory damages of up to $150,000 if they were able to prove intentional infringement, and they could get attorney's fees. Even if they didn't register the copyright prior to the infringement happening, they could register after and obtain an injunction forcing the story to be removed from Literotica.

If the infringing author wrote a preface that indicated expressly that his story was a continuation of another Literotica author's story, as the infringed author's lawyer I would use that as an admission of intentionality. This is why people have to be careful about distinguishing plagiarism from copyright: as long as you attribute something to the original author you shield yourself from allegations of plagiarism, but by doing so you may be digging your hole deeper in a copyright dispute.

If you believe that noncommercial online use of copyrighted content is shielded from copyright infringement liability, you are completely wrong about that, I assure you. Copyright owners shut that shit down all the time.

One thing to keep in mind is that when you are dealing with the entertainment industry--book publishers, movie producers, music producers, all the giant corporate conglomerates that own most of this stuff--you're dealing with the meanest, nastiest, most rapacious and aggressive people possible, who have endless amounts of money to hire armies of lawyers, and nearly the SOLE source of their value is intellectual property. They're going to do everything possible to protect it. And YES, they often do go after the little guy, even when it makes no financial sense, just to send a message. AND they are highly motivated to push legal boundaries and pursue cases that might seem questionable on legal grounds, because they know they have the resources to grind the alleged infringer into submission in most cases.

So, again, you're PROBABLY just fine writing fanfic stories here at Literotica, as a practical matter. But don't confidently convince yourself that you're legally in the right, if compliance with the law matters to you. You may not be.

 

[RocketGrunt]

Discussing the intricacies of the legalities are pointless for several reasons.

1. Obviously, none of us are high powered intellectual property lawyers.

2. You don't actually have to be "correct" to bring a lawsuit, and you don't have to be "wrong" to back down from one. The cost of litigating in terms of money and time is simply wall too much for a small player like Literotica or an even smaller player like an individual smut writer.

3. Many holders of intellectual property believe they have much more or much less power than they do under law. Anne Rice was named as someone who was famously litigious (well outside what the law backed her up on), but George R.R. Martin wrote the Githyanki and got zero dollars from the Githyanki being on the front cover of Baldur's Gate 3 (a video game that made like a billion frickin dollars) because he erroneously believes that Charles Stross' 1980 D&D writeup caused him to lose all rights to the Githyanki forever.

GRRMartin believes he doesn't have rights that he does have, but if he doesn't sue Hasbro, they can keep using his work and making money from it. Anne Rice believed that she had rights she did not have, but hosting sites bowed to her demands anyway because it wasn't worth setting a year of their time on fire to fight it through the courts even if they thought they would eventually win.

So can we get back to ethics in video games, porn fiction?

 

[Bramblethorn]

3. Many holders of intellectual property believe they have much more or much less power than they do under law. Anne Rice was named as someone who was famously litigious (well outside what the law backed her up on), but George R.R. Martin wrote the Githyanki and got zero dollars from the Githyanki being on the front cover of Baldur's Gate 3 (a video game that made like a billion frickin dollars) because he erroneously believes that Charles Stross' 1980 D&D writeup caused him to lose all rights to the Githyanki forever.

Martin wrote a race called "githyanki", in "Dying of the Light". They're described as: "Hrangan slaverace, often termed soulsucks by humans. Barely sentient, malevolent, and potent telepaths, the githyanki were capable of bending and twisting human minds, sending false visions, hallucinations, and dreams, strengthening the animal side of man and warping judgment and reason, all for the end of turning brother against sister." AFAIK they never really show up in the story and they're not significantly developed beyond that paragraph. The only visual description given is that they look like Kavalan gargoyles, but since we're not told what those look like - other than that it's different from Old Earth gargoyles - this isn't very informative.

Stross took the name*, and D&D's githyanki do have some things in common with Martin's: they're a (former) slave race to an imperialist race, and they have telepathic powers. But the D&D version had long since escaped their slavery, they were highly intelligent rather than "barely sentient", and they weren't particularly big on warping human minds/etc.; they'd be more likely to show up and kill people with swords. The visual description is novel to D&D.

The name wouldn't have been protected on its own. Beyond that, the borrowing is pretty minor; I have my doubts whether GRRM would've prevailed in a lawsuit, but IANAL.

*Stross would've been about 15 at the time, which probably explains why this seemed like a good idea to him.

If the infringing author wrote a preface that indicated expressly that his story was a continuation of another Literotica author's story, as the infringed author's lawyer I would use that as an admission of intentionality. This is why people have to be careful about distinguishing plagiarism from copyright: as long as you attribute something to the original author you shield yourself from allegations of plagiarism, but by doing so you may be digging your hole deeper in a copyright dispute.

This is something that came up in the Polychron case: he had stated that he was writing a sequel to LotR, trying to keep it consistent with canon, and those statements were taken as evidence supporting some of the conditions required to establish violation of copyright.

 

[Voboy]

This thread is developing predictably. Like it always does.

Do what your conscience and temperament dictate. If anyone has a problem with it here? Laurel will judge.

For the record, it's NOT okay to use any of my characters. In return, I'll leave yours alone. You're welcome. If you think any of my stories need to be continued? Fuck off. No, they don't. Write your own shit.

The only thing I've created that I think is nifty enough to let other writers borrow is Pixboox, the all-purpose social media app my characters all use. Its functionality is literally limitless, within what my plots need it to do. I do think it'd be cool if others used it, so feel free. Just spell it correctly, please; that's an x on the end.

 

[calmlikeabomb]

So this series of stories by one Reena Kanwar has been around for close to two decades.

If you are Indian, then the term Pyaasi Choot will hit you hard.

It was a formative series for me when I was young, two decades ago, and it has informed a lot of my writing and fantasies. On the surface it might seem tame, but the impact it had on me was indelible.

I don't want to continue this series. But I want to be inspired and take it forward (like Star Wars did with Flash Gordon, Dune, and Kurosawa).

The author has been silent for about 15 years. But I want to continue that legacy. Maybe one in a thousand people will feel the same way about these stories as I do, but I want to continue that legacy.

I might change the names of the characters, or I might not. I might change the atmosphere, or I may not. But would it be so bad, if I didn't, especially given the author is unresponsive?

These stories ignited something in me. I want to give voice to that. I want Reena to have more adventures. I want Reena to reach greater heights of ecstasy and debauchery, in exactly the same purple prose as the original author did.

Would that be so bad?

 

[Voboy]

I might change the names of the characters, or I might not. I might change the atmosphere, or I may not. But would it be so bad, if I didn't, especially given the author is unresponsive?

If you're open to changing everything about the story... then why not simply write your own? You can demonstrably construct and publish your own material... why wouldn't you just do so again?

Nothing wrong with adding an end-note acknowledging the influence this other work had on you as a writer. But write your own shit, as long as you're capable of doing so. And it seems like you are.

Would that be so bad?

Do what your conscience and temperament dictate. If anyone has a problem with it here? Laurel will judge.

 

[calmlikeabomb]

If you're open to changing everything about the story... then why not simply write your own? You can demonstrably construct and publish your own material... why wouldn't you just do so again?

Nothing wrong with adding an end-note acknowledging the influence this other work had on you as a writer. But write your own shit, as long as you're capable of doing so. And it seems like you are.

Oh I am definitely planning to. Reema and her Pyaasi Choot should live again and again and again. I'm just raging (impotently) against the puritanical sanctimonious bullshit that sometimes passes for discourse here.

 

[YmaOHyd]

It's weird how sometimes puritanical sanctimonious bullshit means not wanting people to steal your work.

 

[Voboy]

Oh I am definitely planning to. Reema and her Pyaasi Choot should live again and again and again. I'm just raging (impotently) against the puritanical sanctimonious bullshit that sometimes passes for discourse here.

Based on the kinds of things you've been putting up over the last couple of hours, you're not improving that discourse much.

If you need to explain all your posts as the product of drunkenness and anti-depressants, you shouldn't be posting.