Fanbinding has exploded in recognition up to now few years. Many fanbinders do adhere to a strict gift-economy stance in step with the writers whose work they’re binding, usually limiting the cash they acquire, if any, to masking materials prices. However the folks promoting sure variations of standard fics for revenue are lower from a unique (ebook) material. As they make cash off works the authors themselves can’t promote, they’re placing these authors—and, arguably, fan fiction itself—in an untenable place.
“Technically talking, the copy proper belongs to the writer of the fic, as a result of that’s the ‘copy proper’: They’re the one particular person with the appropriate to make copies of the fic,” says Stacey Lantagne, a copyright lawyer who focuses on fan fiction and teaches at Western New England College Faculty of Regulation. Regardless that she notes it “may be thought of an unsettled query of regulation formally,” fic authors do maintain the copyright to the unique elements of their tales, although in fact not the underlying supply materials.
Is it authorized to bind another person’s fic? “Here’s a typical lawyer reply: It relies upon,” Lantagne jokes. She says “it’s probably authorized to print another person’s fanfic to your personal private, noncommercial use,” including that would probably prolong to paying materials prices for another person to bind it, too. “Noncommercial” right here is essential. Just like the authorized standing of fan fiction itself, the legality of fanbinding rests on honest use, the exception beneath US copyright regulation decided by components like how transformative a piece is, or if somebody is profiting off it—and taking cash away from the rights holder within the course of.
Fan fiction communities have traditionally relied on good-faith communication in the case of doing one thing else with somebody’s fic. Nothing’s stopping you from translating, remixing, or creating an audio model (generally known as podficcing)—or, sure, printing and binding a model, nevertheless it’s good in case you ask first. Some writers submit blanket permissions permitting any noncommercial engagement with their works, and a few, particularly in these hyper-popular corners of fandom, have particular steerage about fanbinding. Final yr, a charity public sale that garnered big sums of cash to bind others’ work led some writers—SenLinYu included—to change their insurance policies to permit private, noncommercial fanbinding solely.
Whereas loads of followers have revered their needs, there may be clearly demand for these books—and thus, continued provide. Lantagne says that since litigation is extraordinarily costly, the one recourse a fan fiction author probably has on this state of affairs is to file DMCA takedown notices, a really tedious course of when there are a number of sellers on a number of websites. “That is what copyright holders have been complaining about ever for the reason that DMCA was handed within the late Nineteen Nineties—it’s a ache to should file a DMCA discover in every single place copyright infringement crops up,” she says. “Nevertheless, the choice is one thing like YouTube’s Content material ID getting used to robotically block uploads, which we all know is notoriously unhealthy at accounting for honest use.”
Though unlawful sellers clearly deserve a superb portion of blame, that continued demand—no matter fic authors’ needs—speaks to the way in which each scale and cash has been altering the fan fiction world lately. To be clear, there was by no means one singular “fan fiction group” or common set of norms, however the broadly accepted gift-economy framing has at all times been undergirded by the truth that many fan fiction readers are additionally writers, and tales are shared inside fandoms, with all of the structural ties they bring about. Pulling-to-publish was usually framed as a betrayal—we had been all on this nonmonetized boat collectively, and now you’ve jumped ship and cashed in.
