Fanfic vs fanart vs fanedit

I’m kinda puzzled because everyone on r/fanfic insists you can’t get paid for fanfic, but its okay to write for free.

Fan artists take commissions all the time, and no one sues even when its insulting or edgy as hell.

Fan edits aren’t even okay to do for free and the only fan site that hosts them I can find is run out of Brazil and hosted in Malaysia.

Since these are all derivative works, what’s the difference?

 

That’s not universal. Fimfic lets authors have Patreons and Kofi.

 

So it’s okay to draw <Modedit:> explicit adult material</modedit>* for money, but writing about it can only be done for free, and yet innocent video of two characters chatting in a coffee shop gets the wrath of Sony’s lawyers? That sounds off.

Mod Note: edited to remove the reason this post was stuck in the mod queue

 

I was going to say because fan edits use an actor’s likeness and then realised so does some fanart… Um..

 

But AO3 bans users for linking to either, and so does fanfiction.net.

 

It may be because fanfiction can be explicitly about the fictional character, not the actor that plays them. This is especially true with characters that originated in books, or that were played by multiple actors. For example, James Bond could be the book version of Bond, or any of the many actors who played him, so the identity of any living individual is obscured. This would not apply to the issue of "real person fic", but then libel or slander may.

Neither fan art nor fan editing have that deniability, so I am not sure why fan art gets a pass to charge. It may be because it is for individual pieces. Issues would certainly arise if someone created a production line producing prints of their fan art of Mickey Mouse and sold them.

The difference may simply be the ease of shutting down commercial distribution of such works. Even if they are initially online fan edits can be easily burned to DVD and distributed, which means that they are shut down upfront, while art and fan works released digitally are far easier to track down all copies off an remove. The result leaves fan edits receiving a far harder initial takedown response.

 

Could be trademark or copyright problems, if one's covered by one and not the other.

 

It could be both. Games Workshop tried to copyright the term 'Space Marine', so anyone writing Warhammer fanfic could be done for trademark violation if they used the word (and anyone writing Heinlein fanfic does an end run straight round it). Anyone doing fanart of their designs would hit copyright instead of trademark, I think.

 

And game mechanics can be patented so you have a three-fer of IP law in one property!

 

FF bans linking anywhere now

 

It's the companies property to do what they like with, it's just up to them what the decide to sue on.

Games Workshop, of Warhammer fame, have just cracked down on a load of the hobby animators. They're gonna do something in that area, so it makes sense for them. No more fanart, or fan movies as GW says so.

 

Of course, if you want to write fanfic about real people then the situation gets a little more messy.

AFAIK, and I'm sure someone will be along to correct me if I am wrong, there is nothing to stop you writing such fanfic if the person is considered to be in the public eye.

You cannot write anything libelous, but anything else may be considered fair game, regardless of how distasteful it may be.

 

I was reading the paper today and saw that there is a site which apparently turns women's photos (and only women's photos) into nudes without the user's consent. Fanedits are apparently illegal, but somehow this is not. The law seems utterly bizarre in this case.

Website uses deepfake tech to undress thousands of everyday women and experts can't do anything | Daily Mail Online

 

The technology is there. Deepfaking faces isn't new, so someone had to make it bodies. It can't imitate scars or birthmarks unless its seen them, so if there aren't nude shots up anywhere of the real woman its pretty easy to prove its faked. Frakking intrusive, mind you.

 

Would an easy way to stop it to be to allow everyone to claim a copyright of their own image. So if anyone does get used without permission, they can sue them.

Then again, finding out who these people are is next to impossible, so you even if you thought about it, there is no way to know who to go after.