Amazon's Kindle Worlds: Instant Thoughts ? Whatever

Eloi, you are codrdially invited to the Morlocks? dinner party. Bring something?juicy.

?or?

Hannibal is at the gate; there goes the neighborhood (#irony in the pre-Alanis Morissette sense)
Take note that Hannibal, who learned and emulated much of the Roman Army, was not feared by the Romans for being an inferior warrior.

Anyway, my biggest concern from the Big Picture POV is that this is another step in Big Media?s recent blatant disregard for anyone?s copyrights but their own. For instance their fraudulent take-down notices of Cory Doctorow?s novel Homeland and others? books and movies. And yes, I realize not all Big Media is responsible for the rent-seeking actions of individual companies or even the MAFFIA, but I could easily see Alloy or Amazon or some other publisher or distributor with kleptomaniacal tendencies staking a claim to fair use works as ?fan ficiton? and claiming the creators should have gone through one these nice new ?legitimate? (i.e. corporately-policed) channels they were so ?generous? to set up. I can just see How It Should Have Ended becoming Disney property by extrajudicial fiat, and independent satire will be something they teach about in history books.

There was a time I would?ve dismissed my own concerns here as paranoia, but, more often than not, the major media companies have shown such contemptuous disregard for both fair use and the copyrights of lesser mortals that I now view any disagreement that doesn?t end in the little guy/gal getting the legal department?s cannons pointed at them as the exception. I?d say we should send in the Space Marines, but they claim to ownership over all the fucking Space Marines. Act now, use the dictionary while it?s still public domain.

So if this was an attempt to squash fan fic through other means, it?s doomed to failure. But I don?t suspect that?s the point.

I don?t write fan fic, but my understanding was that that was something rights-holders had other means and ways of doing, e.g. wielding the DMCA like a mace. Besides, even if that isn?t the explicit goal, I have a hard time seeing how this isn?t another brick in the walled garden Big Media seems intent on building around the First Amendment.

This will have far-reaching consequences that none of us really understand yet.

Meh, I?d say the writing?s on the wall.

?and I strongly suspect that Amazon/Alloy is going to look askance at any slash and may dump into the porn bin as a default.

At which point slash writers will compare notes and (correctly) call Amazon/Alloy out on catering to homophobes to protect their ?family values? market share. After which they?ll reverse course and draw the ire of the homophobes. You can?t please everyone, but you can sure tick off everyone. As a sage once said, this will all end in tears. I?ll get the popcorn.

@Aileen

I?m glad you posted something this morning. I was looking forward to it, since you did such great takedowns of those epub contracts.

I don?t think this is really the same. In this case they aren?t trying to disenfranchise enfranchised authors, they?re just trying to herd cats. But if I had any hope of ever becoming a professional fiction writer, I?d give this particular slaughterhouse a ten-mile berth, or you may find that ideas forged in the fires of Mount Fanfic are unavailable for you to use in the Valley of Orginality.

@ DataAngel

What happens when someone steals someone else?s fanfic and sells it as their own?

Depends. Can you afford to take Amazon to court for a protracted battle? They?ll claim (correctly) that you never had any rights to it in the first place because it isn?t you?re properties. You might be able to claim fair use, but unless you have a secret stash of legal funds or you can get some massive Kickstarter love, I wouldn?t hold my breath about ever getting credit for your creations.

@scole

With all due respect, sir, being monetarily compensated for fanfic isn?t a ?better deal.? Gift culture has is own rewards?development of friendships, positive feedback, infectious ideas?and most of us delight in subverting the social standard and corporate norm. Making a deal at all would be selling our souls to the very devils we?re out to get.

Some folks gotta eat and don?t have the privilege to give the one-fingered salute to everyone who writes for profit. If you don?t want to make money, good for you; but telling writers that do that they?re ?selling their souls? is sanctimonious, snooty and elitist.

@ TransDutch

Here?s an interesting post on the ?firing? 2 years ago of LJ Smith as the author of the Vampire Diaries novels.

Yeah, my first thought when I read John?s post was, Isn?t Vampire Diaries the series where the publisher canned the original author over a plot-disagreement and then hired ghostwriters?

I think I am doing an excellent job this morning posting comments seconds before someone corrects me with the information I didn?t know beforehand. I know this won?t last.

Is that like the opposite of being psychic? :)

@Tachi Gray

In the end, while I can see how it would feel good to put some effort into putting those fanfic dreams to paper, it?s better just to expend your effort to create your own worlds and become the license-holder.

I gather that the appeal for many, if not most, fanfic writers is not writing, but exploring characters and worlds they love past the end of the page/credits.

@Cambias

The bad side: it encourages writers to stick with fan fiction set in other people?s worlds, instead of developing their own settings and characters.

In short: they?ve made a big and very attractive playground to play in, but that may discourage kids from hanging around the workshop and making something new.

I?m unconvinced of your implicit assumption that at least most fan fiction writers would ever have any interest in writing original ficiton, or vice versa. That seems like saying filk-for-hire would draw talent away from original musicians. The reasoning seems extremely flimsy to me.

I?ve written a lot of original fiction just for fun and personal amusement. I?ve written precisely one short story of fan fiction (re: Sapphire & Steel). In neither case was there ever any danger of one becoming the other. I wrote them for different muses.

@ Connor Cochran

Under the Kindle Worlds program Alloy Entertainment might be able to use someone?s idea of turning all the GOSSIP GIRL characters into gay Lithuanian zombies, if they feel like it?but even if they did there would still be nothing to stop the original writer from pounding out a new draft with all original characters and then going forward with that.

Sure there is; it?s called a cease and desist letter.

?I can assure you that there are plenty of writers who feel that ANY fanfic is a violation of the characters they created, and feel great pain over it.

Their tears are sweet refreshing ambrosia, their sobs the music of the spheres.

But many writers and reps don?t feel the same way, and I felt it was important to point out it is mildly amusing to see fanfic writers who never asked permission to use other people?s ideas in a huff over the notion that someone might, after actually PAYING them, wish to make money off of theirs.

Well, you see, corporate art is EVIL?so selling art to corporations is supporting evil?so making art unless you?re already well-off enough to do it gratis is immoral?so poor people can only ethically make art if they starve or talk an arts foundation into supporting them with grants?but rich people are immoral because they make money?loop?(# Hipster Catch-22)

@Greg

What KindleWorlds is doing is an inherently unfair license.

Not so long as it?s voluntary and opt-in, no. It?s if they use it as an excuse to start going after KindleWorlds fanficcers? other works under non-compete, and then if they use it and the inevitable imitators as another tool to unravel fair use, that it will be unfair. Right now it?s just a really really bad idea.

KindleWorlds is saying, hey, lets try to leverage this fan base to our monetary advantage. Fans will write whatever they write, and we will reserve the right to monopolize any ideas the fans come up with and put them into our world without paying the fan for using their works.

They are paying them; they?re just not paying them scale. Buying cows for beans isn?t theft, it?s just slimy.

Well, luckily copyright law isn?t based on protecting the most fragile ego of the most fragile and neurotic author from ever having their feelies hurt about their works.

The UK courts may beg to differ. Unluckily, even here in the States we live in a world where the entry costs for defending fair use in court hoist it out of reach of most private citizens and smaller concerns, such that flying under the radar is better protection from rapaciously litigious rights holders who fallaciously believe that copyright is unlimited license to dictate to others what they may say on or about their properties.

@Mandi M. Lynch

I like that people brought up 50 shades of crap. Somebody?s writing fan fiction about her craptacular fan fiction, and she sent her lawyer after them with a comment about how ?You don?t steal other people?s ideas! You just don?t!?

Gotta give that ladder a good swift kick!

And who?s going to believe that because Jo Nobody wrote a fan fic about it, some huge author stole ideas from them? ?Oh, I had ten books outlined! I?ve been planning this for fifteen years? is a believable counter argument.

All creative work is derivative. That doesn?t mean that the solution is to sell it to the lowest bidder before someone can contest your ownership. The solution is to stop treating generic ideas and plot twists as commodities. Stories, not themes, plot-devices and character arcs, are legitimate commodities. The purpose of copyright is and was to protect attribution and make certain the author of a specific work gets paid. The purpose of copyright is not to stifle creative derivation. I?ve been writing stories for well over a decade. Sometimes I discover ideas I?ve had are not as original as I thought, and sometimes I find another author has published a work featuring a similar idea since I wrote it. And I know they came up with independently, because I?ve only ever shared one small short story of mine with a friend I trust. None of that bothers me, and still wouldn?t even if I wanted to publish, because ideas are not stories and buying into a world where the general form of an idea is something a corporation can erect a fence around and charge rent is a horrible course of action. The persistence of mutable ideas is evidence that a mere idea is not enough to be an original work or art, not that ideas need to be locked away.

@A Mediated Life

As far as claiming copyright, that?s pretty easy. Just have to prove that it was produced before the plagiarized work was. Most word processing programs include date-of-creation data that can be used for that purpose.

And very easily edited, like all metadata. IANAL either, but a IP lawyer should have no trouble demolishing that as admissible evidence. If fair use was equally enforced, I?d agree with you. As it stands, it?s largely an issue of how much justice you can afford.

@Adela

There are countries with moral rights in their IP laws.

That raises some interesting questions. Will KindleWorlds accept international submissions, and will they have to tailor their terms to each country?s IP laws and definitions of libel? Can Amazon say superinjunction? :D

@sojournerstrange

?.because making money off someone?s idea after paying them a nominal pittance is exactly the same as writing noncommercial tributes, parodies, and reimaginations that never compete with or supplant the commercial source material. Okay.

It?s naive to think that because they?re not the same, rights holders won?t use one to crush the other if they can. You let the camel?s nose in the tent at your own risk.

Now if you?ll all excuse me, I have some Nutella porn to go write?

Source: http://whatever.scalzi.com/2013/05/22/amazons-kindle-worlds-instant-thoughts/

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