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

[Voboy]

I've been following this and I totally get where people are coming from when they say "hands off my IP".

Personally I'd be kinda flattered if anyone cared about my characters enough to write fanfiction.
If I dont like the angle you choose, I don't have read it or associate with it.

Would you insist on being asked first? On giving permission?

To me, that's much more of an issue than the fanfic.

 

[ColtonWrites]

Would you insist on being asked first? On giving permission?

To me, that's much more of an issue than the fanfic.

No, not really. No more than someone writing Star Trek fanfic asks permission from Roddenberry's estate.
People write fanfic all the time. It'd mean my work made enough of an impact on someone that they couldn't let it go.

As long as they don't claim I was involved, gave permission when I didn't, etc. it'd be fine.

 

[AwkwardMD]

The venn diagram of "people should be allowed to steal your stuff" and "I steal stuff" is non-zero

 

[RocketGrunt]

You can, and have, repeated your opinion as many times as you want. Unless you address what other people are telling you here, you're not bringing anything new to the table. Simple repetition does not make you correct.

No one has produced anything that even meaningfully needs to be addressed. I've produced several real world examples that have created billion dollar franchises and no one on the "don't steal my stuff" high horse has made a satisfactory answer to either.

On the ethics side we have Wicked. Not one person here has been willing to actually condemn Wicked, which I think says a lot about how deep these moral pronouncements actually go.

On the legal side we have Fifty Shades of Grey. Not one person has suggested a framework by which they would stop people who wrote fanworks of their work from individualizing the IP and passing it off as their own legally distinct creation. Unsurprising, because EL James factually took her ball and went home to make a billion dollar franchise that Stephenie Meyer doesn't get a taste of.

That's it. That's reality. There's an ethical discussion to be had, and the people who claim to have the moral high ground have been unwilling or unable to apply the moral principles they supposedly have to Ariana Grande. There's a legal discussion to be had, but it's completely open and shut that blatantly stealing ideas and taking fig leaf measures to individualize your intellectual property is absolutely legal and there is absolutely nothing that anyone can do about it.

And some people have made loud noises on this thread to disagree, but I have literally billions of dollars of examples showing that they are wrong.

 

[Purechicanery]

On the ethics side we have Wicked. Not one person here has been willing to actually condemn Wicked, which I think says a lot about how deep these moral pronouncements actually go.

I wonder if that would fall under 'parody/fair use.' Probs also helps that Wizard of Oz hit public domain in 1956.

 

[StillStunned]

The venn diagram of "people should be allowed to steal your stuff" and "I steal stuff" is non-zero

I suspect you could also add a "sure, I used AI, but I edited it myself" circle to that diagram.

 

[Voboy]

No one has produced anything that even meaningfully needs to be addressed. I've produced several real world examples that have created billion dollar franchises and no one on the "don't steal my stuff" high horse has made a satisfactory answer to either.

This site disagrees with you.

It's not enough to say your piece. If you want to maintain credibility, you also need to address that disagreement, and the reasons for it. You seem to be ignoring all that.

On the ethics side we have Wicked. Not one person here has been willing to actually condemn Wicked, which I think says a lot about how deep these moral pronouncements actually go.

I addressed exactly that. You don't seem to have read my post. It's far from a clear-cut case.

 

[RocketGrunt]

I addressed exactly that. You don't seem to have read my post. It's far from a clear-cut case.

You came up with some reasons that you didn't feel that you had to condemn Wicked. Good for you.
The people on the ethics in story continuation rampage are claiming that it is unethical to continue other peoples' stories. If they actually believed that, condemning Wicked should be VERY EASY.

We all know that it's legal to have made Wicked. There are lots of reasons that it's legal, the people making it were very careful. But if you're going to make an ethical argument that continuing someone else's defunct story into a different direction is unethical, then Wicked is an absolutely textbook example of that. Dorothy's face isn't even shown. The director says that she's "just a pawn" and does not have agency. That's a very large shit to take on the Oz canon.

Every single person who claims to have a moral objection to people continuing defunct stories or making radical changes to other peoples' work should have absolutely no problem at all saying the words "Wicked is an unethical thing to have been made." The fact that the suddenly find "nuance" as soon as they like the show tunes says absolutely everything we need to know about how solid those moral principles actually are.

 

[yowser]

Your sweeping assertions, aggressive put-your-dukes-up stance and inability to listen to (never mind respect) the thoughts of others pretty fairly diminishes your arguments.

I know you have likely achieved your goals, getting more mileage out of this dispute than deserved, but it is fairly clear that most authors here aren't that fond of having their creations appropriated.

That's the reality.

 

[Voboy]

You came up with some reasons that you didn't feel that you had to condemn Wicked. Good for you.

Why would I condemn Wicked? I've never read it.

The people on the ethics in story continuation rampage are claiming that it is unethical to continue other peoples' stories. If they actually believed that, condemning Wicked should be VERY EASY.

We all know that it's legal to have made Wicked. There are lots of reasons that it's legal, the people making it were very careful. But if you're going to make an ethical argument that continuing someone else's defunct story into a different direction is unethical, then Wicked is an absolutely textbook example of that.

Friend, not a SINGLE thing I wrote in that reply had anything to do with legal arguments. I wrote it that way for a reason: I don't care about the legal arguments.

What I said, if you'd read more carefully, is that I don't know whether it's unethical to have added onto Baum's universe, and that the evidence I've seen suggests he'd be fine with it. I guessed that he'd never told his publishers not to add on, and I asked you to correct me if you had any reason to. You've chosen not to.

Every single person who claims to have a moral objection to people continuing defunct stories or making radical changes to other peoples' work should have absolutely no problem at all saying the words "Wicked is an unethical thing to have been made."

I don't know that it is. Your attempt to pigeonhole me notwithstanding, neither do you.

 

[MelissaBaby]

Friend, not a SINGLE thing I wrote in that reply had anything to do with legal arguments. I wrote it that way for a reason: I don't care about the legal arguments.

This is not the commercial marketplace. We deal in different currencies here.

 

[YmaOHyd]

We all know that it's legal to have made Wicked.

That's actually kind of a key piece here. I hold the copyright to my stories, they are not in the public domain. When my copyright expires in 2076 or whatever, people are free to use my characters however they choose. The Wizard of Oz is in the public domain. By definition, those characters belong to the public, just like Steamboat Willie or Winnie the Pooh or Sherlock Holmes. I think Blood and Honey is fucking stupid, but there's nothing unethical about making it (except that it's a cynical lowest-common-denominator cash grab with nothing to say beyond 'what if beloved children's thing was eeeeeeevil'). That Wizard of Oz is in the public domain means there's no real ethical question beyond how you feel about Wicked as a creative work.

 

[RocketGrunt]

That's actually kind of a key piece here. I hold the copyright to my stories, they are not in the public domain. When my copyright expires in 2076 or whatever, people are free to use my characters however they choose. The Wizard of Oz is in the public domain. By definition, those characters belong to the public, just like Steamboat Willie or Winnie the Pooh or Sherlock Holmes. I think Blood and Honey is fucking stupid, but there's nothing unethical about making it (except that it's a cynical lowest-common-denominator cash grab with nothing to say beyond 'what if beloved children's thing was eeeeeeevil). That Wizard of Oz is in the public domain means there's no real ethical question beyond how you feel about Wicked as a creative work.

I cannot accept a claim that an action being legal necessarily means that it is ethical.

In 1976 the duration of copyright was extended from 28 years (extendable to 56) to 75 years. In 1998, that duration was extended again to 95 years. Surely the ethics of writing works related to another author's work did not change when the Walt Disney corporation bribed members of congress. Any discussion of ethics would have to acknowledge that that very law is as clear an act of corruption that exists. When Disney manages to get the duration of copyrights extended for another 30 years, would it suddenly become unethical to reference another work for a few more decades? The very idea is preposterous and offensive. Corporate lobbyists do not get to determine what actions are moral, because like, obviously.

Let's not get too far away from the actual point under contention: is it ethical to continue unfinished abandoned works written by pseudonymous writers who are unreachable without first waiting a century for everyone who ever knew them to die? And the answer is obviously yes.

We can quibble about what a reasonable amount of time to wait is before concluding that an author who has left the site is not coming back and will never finish their story. But once we've reached that conclusion, what are we even protecting by telling people they can't write an ending? If a road worker walks off the job, we don't wait a century before letting anyone finish the road.

Finished stories have their own ethical ramifications. If an author is done with a story, we shouldn't expect them to keep writing to prevent it from being declared open season. A story with a beginning, a middle, and an end is not "abandoned," it's "finished." And that's importantly different from an ethical standpoint. Whether Disney's lobbyists wrote any such provisions into the latest version of the law or not.

 

[AwkwardMD]

Let's not get too far away from the actual point under contention: is it ethical to continue unfinished abandoned works written by pseudonymous writers who are unreachable without first waiting a century for everyone who ever knew them to die? And the answer is obviously yes.

You are not in a position to judge this if the author is unreachable. Sure, in a poorly constructed hypothetical where you decide that in advance, maybe.

But it's a poorly constructed hypothetical, and you should stop asking those.

 

[YmaOHyd]

is it ethical to continue unfinished abandoned works written by pseudonymous writers who are unreachable without first waiting a century for everyone who ever knew them to die? And the answer is obviously yes.

Of course it is, if you define the terms of the discussion so you're already correct. But that's silly, as is your whole post. There is no ethical dimension to using characters in the public domain. It's a horrible hypothetical hill to die on.

 

[RocketGrunt]

Of course it is, if you define the terms of the discussion so you're already correct. But that's silly, as is your whole post. There is no ethical dimension to using characters in the public domain. It's a horrible hypothetical hill to die on.

Dreams in the Witch House was published in 1932 and has been public domain for decades because HP Lovecraft died before the 1960 deadline to extend his copyright.
The Maltese Falcon was published in 1930 and became public domain two days ago because an extension was filed by Warner Brothers and then it got hit with two separate blanket extensions issued by congress at the behest of large piles of bribe money from the Walt Disney Corporation.

Are you honestly telling me that five days ago it would have been ethical to publish a reference to 93 year old Dreams in the Witch House but would not have been ethical to publish a reference to 95 year old The Maltese Falcon?

Seriously? You want to claim that that obviously corrupt and ridiculous legal framework defines the ETHICS of the situation?

 

[YmaOHyd]

Are you honestly telling me that five days ago it would have been ethical to publish a reference to 93 year old Dreams in the Witch House but would not have been ethical to publish a reference to 95 year old The Maltese Falcon?

Seriously? You want to claim that that obviously corrupt and ridiculous legal framework defines the ETHICS of the situation?

You hear that? That's the Bad Faith Siren! It goes off when you try moving the goalposts onto another frickin' planet.

As I said before and you didn't understand because the mention of copyright law and protections puts you on Mars, once works are in the public domain there is no longer an ethical component to their usage. Not ethical, not unethical, it's simply no longer a factor, and the only thing that matters is what's done with them.

Using Maltese Falcon would be exactly the same as using any other copyrighted work. My feelings don't change based on some fuzzy logic about date proximity or incoherent rage about the Walt Disney Corporation.

 

[Voboy]

Let's not get too far away from the actual point under contention: is it ethical to continue unfinished abandoned works written by pseudonymous writers who are unreachable without first waiting a century for everyone who ever knew them to die? And the answer is obviously yes.

You should look up what "obviously" means, then consult the other peoples' opinions in this thread (which you don't do), then ask Laurel (which you won't do).

Maybe then you'll restate what is "obvious."

 

[RocketGrunt]

You hear that? That's the Bad Faith Siren! It goes off when you try moving the goalposts onto another frickin' planet.

As I said before and you didn't understand because the mention of copyright law and protections puts you on Mars, once works are in the public domain there is no longer an ethical component to their usage. Not ethical, not unethical, it's simply no longer a factor, and the only thing that matters is what's done with them.

Using Maltese Falcon would be exactly the same as using any other copyrighted work. My feelings don't change based on some fuzzy logic about date proximity or incoherent rage about the Walt Disney Corporation.

Maltese Falcon was copyrighted three days ago. It (the book, not the movie) is public domain now. You are telling me that the ethics of writing Sam Spade erotica changed three days ago. And the ethics of writing Kesiah Mason erotica changed sixty years earlier than that because paperwork wasn't filed in 1959?

Really? You think the ethics of writing about a character are dependent on the intricacies of paperwork filed or not in the late 1950s? That's just... fucking wow.

 

[YmaOHyd]

Really? You think the ethics of writing about a character are dependent on the intricacies of paperwork filed or not in the late 1950s? That's just... fucking wow.

Let me ask you a question. Are you entitled to live in a house before you close on it?

 

[RocketGrunt]

Let me ask you a question. Are you entitled to live in a house before you close on it?

Whether you are legally entitled to do something or not has very little to do with the ethics of doing it.

I mean, you're legally allowed to cheat on your wife. You shouldn't do it, because it's unethical. But it is legally permitted.

Your conflation of legal allowance and ethical righteousness is just such a Lawful Evil point of view that I'm actually flabbergasted to see it in the wild. It's usually a point of view given to cartoon villains.

Normal people accept that there are unethical things that are legal and ethical things that are illegal. Chewing gum doesn't suddenly stop being ethical when you enter Singapore's jurisdiction. If you cannot or will not accept that ethical and legal aren't the same thing, we seriously can't have a conversation. Definitely about this, probably about most other things.

 

[YmaOHyd]

Is it ethical to live in a house before you close on it?

 

[old_prof]

I know you're not going to listen to me, but I have spent too much time over many giving advice to young hotheads to not at least try.

Take a step back. Take a day off. It wouldn't be hard to restart the argument. You are arguing by yourself against a wide range of people. Anyone who finds themselves in that situation (including me) should take a step back and ask themselves "Why does everyone else see this differently. Is is possible they're right and I'm wrong." Because everyone is likely to be wrong in that situation. It could be that you are the sole clear mind, the only one who can cut through all the issues and make out the answer clearly. It seems far more likely that you have dug your heels in so deep that you are underground now.

In defense of the "you've dug your heels in" position. There are at least a half dozen core issues that people have raised that you have completely ignored. At one point, you argued that is was legal, therefore ethical. You do seem to have realized that maybe the lawyer in this conversation does know something and maybe what you're proposing isn't legal, so legality is not a judge of ethics.

Take a step back. Reread the points posted by others. Reread your own inconsistencies. If you still think you are the lobe voice of reason, do what you have to. But take a step back first and check that you really want this to be the hill you will forever be judged on.

 

[IWroteThis]

I cannot accept a claim that an action being legal necessarily means that it is ethical.

That's fine, but it's also irrelevant, as you seem to have fallen victim to the Fallacy of the Inverse.

The more relevant version of that question is, does being illegal necessarily mean that it's unethical.

Sorry, but your continued misuse of Wicked as an example is a prime example of your logical failure. Whether or not the writing of Wicked based on work within the public domain was ethical or not, it has no bearing on the ethics of writing something based on a work still under copyright.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Wow, @RocketGrunt. I don't understand where you find the energy to argue on this topic into infinity. In that sense, and only in that sense, I agree with most of the crowd here.

But what's more amusing is the fact that so many people here can't seem to separate legality from ethics. I don't get how they can, and it's so obvious in many of the posts here, conflate those two concepts so often. Wow, truly.

Anyway, I see your point, and I agree that whether some work is in the public domain or is protected by a copyright doesn't affect the ethics of using that work. It affects only legality. Legality in this sense is the copyright law that someone lobbied for, that some officials agreed on, and then voted for. That law is arbitrary in the sense of ethics; it's just a result of an agreement between certain interested parties.

A work passing into the public domain is merely a result of the force of law, not something that happens by divine influence. It's silly to use passing into the public domain as an ethical argument.

Now, when we talk about ethics, there is personal ethics, which is probably the most important one in this case, but there's also the collective ethics, which often gets incorporated into certain laws, although I'm totally going to argue that the copyright law isn't one of those. That one is totally a case of mere practicality.

So I'll mostly tell you my personal ethics on the topic. To me, it doesn't matter whether it has been one, ten, or a hundred years since the author died, from an ethical standpoint. Either it's right to use someone's work the second after their death, or it's still wrong to use it a millennium after their death.

Spouses, children, or legal guardians inheriting copyright to the author's intellectual work, while practical and acceptable as a concept, isn't something I see as necessarily ethical. There are authors who are likely turning in their graves, considering what their inheritors allowed to happen with their work. Most recently, Tolkien and Jordan come to my mind.

Anyway, this isn't a bad topic for debate, but as I said, it's mostly affected by our personal ethics. For me, if the author has passed away, then their work being protected by copyright or falling into the public domain has zero bearing on the ethics of using that work, although the legality of those two cases is obviously very different.

The only thing that matters to me in deciding whether using such work is ethical or not is the motive. If celebrating the work and the author, and respecting the essence, the soul of that work, is what prompts one to use it, then that's fine by me.
But if it's just greed or political motivation that spurs one to use such work, then even the inheritors allowing/selling the rights has zero importance from the ethical standpoint. The inheritors aren't the author. I see such work as an abomination.

Yet if the author is alive, then things aren't the same. Then, you can actually ask them for permission, convince them of your love and respect for their work, and of your honest intentions. Ethically, it's not okay if you create something that angers the author, who should be the only arbiter of their own work.

From a more practical standpoint, I already said that I would likely treat someone using my work as simple fanfic. But the motives would matter. Someone treating the work with respect vs someone just wanting to leech off some followers or sell a story or something. And I'm still only guessing at my own reaction in such a case. Maybe I'd be pissed off regardless of how my work was treated.