sodiumflare:

dictacontrion:

pottergerms:

sliceosunshine:

fanfichasruinedmylife:

pagerunner-j:

demonicae:

tiger-in-the-flightdeck:

racethewind10:

emma-regina4ever:

beckpoppins:

adiwriting:

fandomlife-universe:

So I’m on AO3 and I see a lot of people who put “I do not own [insert fandom here]” before their story.

Like, I came on this site to read FAN fiction. This is a FAN fiction site. I’m fully aware that you don’t own the fandom or the characters. That’s why it’s called FAN FICTION.

Oh you youngins… How quickly they forget.

Back in the day, before fan fiction was mainstream and even encouraged by creators… This was your “please don’t sue me, I’m poor and just here for a good time” plea.

Cause guess what? That shit used to happen.

how soon they forget ann rice’s lawyers.

What happened with her lawyers.

History became legend. Legend became myth….  And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost.

I worked with one of the women that got contacted by Rice’s lawyers. Scared the hell out of her and she never touched fandom again.
The first time I saw a commission post on tumblr for fanart, I was shocked.

One of the reasons I fell out of love with her writing was her treatment of the fans… (that and the opening chapter of Lasher gave me such heebie-jeebies with the whole underage sex thing I felt unclean just reading it.)

I have zero problem with fanart/fic so long as the creators aren’t making money off of it. It is someone else’s intellectual property and people who create fan related works need to respect that (and a solid 98% of them do.)

The remaining 2% are either easily swayed by being gently prompted to not cash in on someone else’s IP. Or they DGAF… and they are the ones who will eventually land themselves in hot water. Either way: this isn’t much of an excuse to persecute your entire fanbase.

But Anne Rice went off the deep end with this stuff by actively attacking people who were expressing their love for her work and were not profiteering from it.

The Vampire Chronicles was a dangerous fandom to be in back in the day. Most of the works I read/saw were hidden away in the dark recesses of the internet and covered by disclaimers (a lot of them reading like thoroughly researched legal documents.)

And woe betide anyone who was into shipping anyone with ANYONE in that fandom. You were most at risk, it seemed, if your vision of the characters deviated from the creators ‘original intentions.’ (Hypocritical of a woman who made most of her living writing erotica.)

Imagine getting sued over a headcanon…

Put simply: we all lived in fear of her team of highly paid lawyers descending from the heavens and taking us to court over a slashfic less than 500 words long.

all

of

this

Reblogging because I can’t believe there are people out there who don’t know the story behind fan fiction disclaimers. 

#certain websites even had a ‘disclaimer’ section you had to fill in or you couldn’t post your work#we all lived in dread of making so much as a typo in our disclaimers#just in case that somehow voided them and the lawyers would emerge from the shadows and drag us to the pits of hell (via @touchyourblood)

Yeah, back in the old days we were all afraid of being sued, especially since the whole ~internet fandom~ thing was fairly new and we didn’t have copyright laws for online content. We didn’t have social media to make discussing your favourite thing such a common occurrence that the limit to how much you can engage with it would be stretched.

That whole Anne Rice business was freaking scary for any fanfic writer, because it could be the end for all of us. But well, we’re still here, so fuck you, Anne Rice (don’t sue me).

Nowadays, unless you’re making money, it’s impossible to lose if an author is stupid enough to sue you over fan work. I don’t write disclaimers anymore, it’s sort of unnecessary.

(And btw, no disclaimer would protect us if they decided we were trespassing copyright laws. Luckily that didn’t happen.)

Also worth mentioning:

– Copyright stuff is part of what the OTW (aka the Organization for Transformative Works, aka AO3′s parent org) does. OTW: making fic-reading non-profit and easier on the eyeballs AND making fandom a safer environment for creators.

– There’s a great discussion if this stuff on Episode 4 of @fansplaining, Buncha Lawyers. (Also on itunes) – fair use, copyright, the history of this stuff. Very much worth checking it out!!

Remember the days of triumphant “Ron Moore said I could”? That was fucking revolutionary.