Oh dear, can understand that people don't want "their" abandoned work picked up by random persons without permission and all that jazz, but is not "continuing" or writing our own interpretation a work why many of us turned to fanfiction in the first place?

That said I do think people are obligated to ask if they want to pick up someone else's work, just as the author in question, if he or she is still active, are obligated to give an answer.

And with my ranting done, sorry about that by the way, I have a legitimate question to ask, I did read right when I understood the Original Post about banning only pertains to people "stealing" Works of DLP Authors, right? If not, a modification of the Original Post may be required

 

Disregarding the rest because others have covered it better than I could, stealing is a really dickish thing to do. And while it's probably not something you can really be banned for, don't expect DLP to look favorably at all on it either.

 

Just as it is a courtesy to ask about picking up abandoned fanfiction,
and then we are back where it all began, people picking up "Abandoned" fanfiction due to thinking it is okay because the author can not be obliged to answer a simple question.

That said, as someone who has actually studied literature at a higher level, all this talk of copyright in parts of the thread makes my skin crawl, if copyright had been used more through history, several interesting works of Postcolonial literature as well as other kinds of literature would never have been writen.

And lastly, I apologize for my rudeness, if anyone percives it as such, but everyone has the right to make themselves heard, no?

 

Hmm, True enough I supose, even if I still think copyright is a silly thing when it comes to literature, Alas, an education in the subject has corrupted me. If you think people have the right to defend their own works from others, do not study the subject of literature, it will depress you.

 

Do you seriously believe that asking for permission from the author is a courtesy?

 

Hi, Im going to steal from you, but Im asking first, but still going to do it, thats fine tho because I asked....

 

Yes, study literature, and you will see lots of what is known as "Rewriting" a fancy name for published fanfiction is what it is, where the authors neither name the author of the work that inspired theirs nor asked for permission to continuing it or writing a prequel. If real authors don't care much about asking, why should we as fanfiction authors?

Would feel flatered myself if someone continued something I wrote, even if they had not asked for permission, who knows, they might have done a better job then I did.

 

Sorry, but this made me laugh. Is your degree in Postcolonial literature supposed to impress us?
EDIT: Ninja'ed by Jon

 

I know it makes me come across as a pretentious douchebag a problem I have sometimes, can become a bit bullheaded when I snow in on something, sorry about that, and thank you for callling me out on it, still have my own opinion about the subject, and can be a bit opinionated sometimes, I do however understand why the rest of you feel like you do, sorry if I insulted anyone.

 

You also have a surprising run-on sentence problem for someone who studies literature.

 

I'm not very comfortable with comparing continuation of someone's work to stealing. If you steal something, the original owner doesn't have it anymore, and this clearly isn't the case.

I'd like a clarification: is writing omakes for Ponyville authors' stories a bannable offence right now? If not, where is the border? If Rorschach's Blot was a Ponyville author, would the author of Terminal Justice be banned if it was written without original author's consent?

On a side note: I'm glad it doesn't work like that in scientific research. "You better not continue my research without my explicit permission!".

 

I mean, if you want to base an argument on semantics and technicality, this isn't true. Ownership rights are many and varied, and possession is just one of them. Appropriation of any one of the rights of the owner is sufficient to count as theft. For example, changing the price on the display of a good in a shop is enough to count as theft (providing that other elements of the crime are there, such as intent), because you've appropriated the owner's right to set the price of the good.

All that said, I think trespass is the more appropriate legal analogy, in that the property right is the right to exclusive possession; the right to exclude the rest of the world from your idea.

I think people in the thread are repeatedly failing to make the distinction between a continuation and a fanfiction. A continuation is usurpation of the original work, a fanfiction is a novel work that uses some ideas but in an original way. To show it in picture form:

 

Haha, Taure, no. Are you telling me that post DH continuations aren't fanfics because they continue the story rather than diverging from it?

 

The fact that some people are dicks doesn't give you the right to be one too.

 

That would be an absurd conclusion which in no way follows from anything I said.

The diagram clearly shows the continuation overruling the original author's plan for the fic. The continuation says, either explicitly or implicitly: "this is the natural and legitimate conclusion of the unfinished storyline, of equal authority to the original author's plan". Even if you give credit, you can't avoid this implication.

This doesn't apply to the DH example for two principal reasons:

1. As I said in my earlier post in this thread, the fanfic and canon exist on two different levels such that canon always overrules fanfic. So a fanfiction continuation of canon does not usurp canon. But two fanfictions are on equal levels, both of them derivative from canon. Fanfiction can usurp other fanfiction (this is why giving credit cannot avoid the implication of equal authority, because both are just fanfics*).

2. The fanfic isn't telling DH (or a rival to DH), it's telling another story completely.

*Indeed, this very thread is the perfect example of why giving credit doesn't prevent usurpation. There will always be those who will claim ideas cannot be owned and so the original is of no greater authority than the derivative.