- Bob Tarantino at JD Supra Law updated a 2010 discussion about fanfic in light of recent developments in Canada. “A discussion of the legal implications of fan fiction would not be complete without mentioning two relevant matters which are not affected by the UGC exception introduced by the CMA: moral rights and trade-mark (or passing off) claims.” Although the UGC exception pertains to copyright infringement, it “has no effect on an author’s potential moral rights claims. And because fan fiction may make use of elements of an author’s creation such as titles, character and location names to which some form of trade-mark protection applies (e.g., Star Wars fan fiction that makes use of character names like Luke Skywaylker (a registered mark in Canada), …there remains the possibility that some form of trade-mark based action could be commenced by the relevant rights-owner.”
- Regardless of what’s being discussed in legal circles, fanfic is moving to being both acknowledged and appreciated by perfomers, and seen as a matter worth discussing by the press. A news story on the TCA session for new series The Following began “Shippers, start your engines. Ready your Tumblrs. Start combing the works of Edgar Allen Poe for excellent fan fiction titles.” The reason? “FOX’s new drama “The Following,”from “Scream” scribe Kevin Williamson, is a violent, provocative drama about a serial killer and the man hunting him. But, surprisingly, it’s constructed more like a romance.” And it contains a canon M-M-F threesome. A reporter “confessed that, having seen the first four episodes of the show, she’s rooting for Hardy and Carroll to kiss. Ever the crowd pleaser, Bacon happily grabbed Purefoy’s face and laid a smooch on him.”
- Zakia Uddin wrote in The Society Pages about fanfic role playing on Omegle. “We perform identities on social networks, using filters and images, and timelines, and real-time updates – but those identities are never too far removed from those we perform in real-world frames. Roleplaying on Omegle offers a way of getting closer to other writers’ characters in ways which are paradoxically more personal and more immersed in the author’s creation than ever before. While fans wait for their favourite TV series or book series to start up again, they create narratives in collaboration with others which run parallel to their ‘real’ lives. What happens to the division between the fiction and nonfiction when we can experience being someone entirely different every day, within the frames of social networks like Tumblr and Facebook?”
Do you role play? Will you be watching The Following? Write about it in Fanlore. Contributions are welcome from all fans.
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Law-nerd is a lawyer practicing in Ontario, who teaches law – including IP Law – part time.
[1] See http://www.mcspotlight.org/media/press/clandonald_jan97.html and http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8243270.stm regarding McDonalds inability to control restaurants with similar names. [2] See Snow v. The Eaton Centre Ltd., 1982 CarswellOnt 1336, (1982) 70 C.P.R. (2d) 105, for a discussion of moral rights in Canada ... the full text of the case is not available for free online, but I’ve put a copy of it here: http://www.sendspace.com/file/zt0ctj temporarily.