Bill S.978: What Could It Mean for Fan-Fiction?

You can read the text of the proposed bill by clicking here. The bill was introduced back in May and Congress began debating it at the end of June. I must stress that this isn't close to being passed, and this article is ONLY MY OPINION as to how this could impact the fan-fiction communities here on Mibba or Fanfiction.net or Quizilla.

The proposed bill, titled Bill S.978, makes it a felony to publicly display or create any sort of transformative work using any copyrighted material, and even use it, like a song, in the background of a YouTube video.

We already know that sites like YouTube and deviantART would be hit hard if this bill were to pass. YouTube users would need permission from either the record company or artists themselves to use a song as background music or to make a cover of it. Singer123 would never be able to sing a cover of (or make a lyric video for) "Famous Last Words" without having permission from either Reprise Records or My Chemical Romance. Gamer123 would need exclusive permission from Activision to upload videos of themselves playing a game marketed and created by the company. On deviantART, the entire section labelled Fan Art would disappear, since no one would be able to draw any fan-art without permission from the character's creator. Artist123 would have to get permission from Disney to draw a picture of Mickey Mouse, for example.

But this article is intended to talk about what damage this bill could do to the fan-fiction community on websites like Fanfiction.net, Quizilla, and Mibba.

The bill is trying to make it a felony to publicly display copyrighted material, or turn said material into a transformative work. Fan-fiction, by definition, means, fiction written by fans of a TV series, movie, book etc., using existing characters and situations to develop new plots. If the bill were to be passed, FanFicWriter123 would need permission from JK Rowling to write a piece of fiction featuring the Harry Potter characters.

Many writers, including Rowling herself, have given their blessings to fan-fiction writers wanting to use their story characters in their own works. Rowling is "flattered people wanted to write their own stories based on her characters." [1] Some authors, like Stephenie Meyer of "Twilight" fame, aren't the biggest fans of their characters being used in other stories but don't try to stop the writers. [2] Only authors such as Anne Rice, the author of books like The Vampire Lestat, do not like their characters being used in fanfiction and actually have not allowed fan-fiction featuring her story characters. [3]

Now, if this law were to pass, it would be necessary for each and every fan-fiction writer to get permission from the author or creator of the work. Let's dissect this a little more. Do you really think that JK Rowling would respond to an e-mail from FanFicWriter123 when she probably gets zillions of fan e-mails every day?

No? I thought so. This is exactly the point as to why this would hurt the fan-fiction communities.

Let's sidetrack into song-fics for a moment. Song-fics are stories, usually one-shots, that use the lyrics to a certain song to set the mood for the story. Quite often, these stories include the lyrics of the song itself in the story. Countless stories like that exist here on Mibba; I've written one myself. These stories would disappear when this bill goes into law. Why? Because no one wants to get permission from the record company or the artist to use the song lyrics in the story.

Real-person fiction (RPF) is defined as a fan-fiction story that is written about a real person. Stop reading this for a moment, open a new tab in your browser, and peruse the section of Mibba labelled "Fan-fiction stories." Most of them are written about musicians or sports players. These are real people and they can take action against stories about them already, with copyright laws that have already been passed.

In fact, any sort of fan-fiction can have action taken against them with existing copyright laws, thus this bill isn't actually necessary.

Fanfiction writers aren't paid for their work. They do it because they want to. It's a labor of love about movies, TV series, books, and people that they admire. That's really all it is: a sign of admiration. In certain fandoms, writing your first fan-fiction about it is almost a rite of passage; I'm involved in several of them where that takes place.

This bill would destroy the fan-fiction community not only here on Mibba, but on any website that allows fan-fiction to be posted.

WORKS CITED

1. Waters, Darren. "Rowling Backs Potter Fan-fiction." May 27 2004. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3753001.stm>

2. Genet, Allison. "Stephenie Meyer Talks 'Twilight' and 'Breaking Down'". 7 July 2010. <http://www.twifans.com/profiles/blogs/stephenie-meyer-talks-twilight>

3. Croatoan Fanfic. n.p. n.d. <http://www.angelfire.com/rant/croatoan/>