Copyright's not the issue, unless they were plagiarizing the text to begin with, in which case paying for it is the least of the problems.
Trademarks are the issue. Giving the appearance of writing original material with trademarked properties for money kicks his fanfiction completely out of the legal grey area that fanfic resides in. It becomes using someone else's intellectual property for profit.
Can we report them to Patreon? That the material this person has on their site constitutes copyright infringement?
EDIT: Just checked, it is against their ToS, but it has to be the copyright holder that personally sends the DMCA Takedown request.
(03-23-2019, 11:57 AM)Bob Schroeck Wrote: [ -> ]Copyright's not the issue, unless they were plagiarizing the text to begin with, in which case paying for it is the least of the problems.
Trademarks are the issue. Giving the appearance of writing original material with trademarked properties for money kicks his fanfiction completely out of the legal grey area that fanfic resides in. It becomes using someone else's intellectual property for profit.
Sorry Bob, but Copyright is still
very much at issue. Don't forget that copyright also includes the right to exploit derivative works; which fanfiction is. The only real grey area for that is the non-commercial nature of most fanfiction.
'Thou yes trademark is also an issue and probably the bigger one since it has both higher penalties and is easier to go after internationally.
Ehhh.... I'm not really convinced there's some great harm being done by people wanting to throw money at fanfic writers they like to make it easier for them to continue writing fanfic they like.
Also a couple works that I've gotten emotionally invested in enough to start writing ficfics of were written on commission, so would probably not exist otherwise.
-Morgan.
I know folks that sell Tom Swift jr. fanfic on Amazon. They're clear on copyright, due to making sure that they only use Tom Swift jr canon elements from Electronic Hydrolung and Visitor from Planet X (the two volumes of the series that Grosset and Dunlap screwed up the registering on), but they have to be very careful about trademark.
New
Resurrection (How to Train Your Dragon/Marvel Cinematic Universe) is up! On Berk, Astrid and Snotlout deal with the problems caused by Hiccup's absence, while, on Midgard, Hiccup's search for the sword-key continues its gradual acceleration.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/157167...s/43257467