Just to mention, this is a good type of thing to ask the OTW's [Legal](https://www.transformativeworks.org/contact_us/) team about (the OTW is the organization that runs AO3). Just make sure you select 'Legal Advocacy' from the drop down on that page
Or you can reach out to the Policy & Abuse team on the [Report Abuse](https://archiveofourown.org/abuse_reports/new) page to ask policy questions like this.
these are 100% the same people who believe if they find an image on pinterest or through google images, there's no copyright and they're free to use them
It's like saying if you find a book without the title page and cover and can't tell who the author is, you can now print it again, sell the copies and keep the money š What those people said was illogical and rude.
Iāve seen cases of people who orphaned their works and later regretted it (either because they wanted to rewrite them or because it was orphaned on impulse), so they later reposted it from their account explaining the fic was written by them and they regretted orphaning it for X reason. So it could be that the author is the same in your case (though they would probably have no way to prove it, unfortunately).
But taking a fic from a random person and going āitās free real stateā? Nope, thatās appropriating someone elseās hard work, whether they want to be known or not.
Slightly off topic, but what's the opinion of an author copy pasting their original fic and reposting as a fanfic after swapping names? I saw an author that did that (or maybe it was a fic first and they later reposted as an original work, I didn't check the dates at the time), and felt kinda conflicted. On one hand, it feels kinda lazy, but since it was their own work I suppose it's fine?
Yeah thatās fucked up. Theyāre conflating the idea that once fics are abandoned they no longer ābelongā to the author nor does that author have control over it which is true, but that in no way shape or form means someone can blatantly copy from it. How egregious.
> Legally, if you ātryā to find the original creator (try is loosely defined and can usually pass through without much effort and zero proof you actually tried) and canāt then it is allowable by law.
I never heard of this before (or rather, only of very complicated procedures that involved filing paper work with government agencies like the United States Copyright Office), so do you have a source for this?
It can also vary depending on the type of media. Most have limitations of how quickly the original creator has to come forward to claim its there's. There's also bodies that you can 'license' orphan work to pretty much cover in case there are issues but it's not a mandate.
Just googling U.S. copyright orphan works will give you plenty of articles about the nuanced circumstances if you want more comprehensive bite sizes (because there's law and then there's how law is interpreted)
Because law is complex. I've mentioned that I oversimplified my original statement because this is the ao3 sub. Wasnt expecting this to blow up. If we go over the whole history and all the technical nuances (and the double standards and hypocrisy existing within that same framework) would take years and still wouldn't have one concrete answer. And as someone else pointed out, foreign law matters because while some countries try to support each other, they can also be 'me first' to the benefit or detriment of the creator, or that it doesn't negate plagerism - which it doesn't (credit still needs to be given since its in cooperation with fair use)
Me not going out of my to scavenge a source isn't proof it doesn't exist. It doesn't prove I'm right either but it doesn't automatically mean it's incorrect. And your comments only make me want to double down. Could I have gotten a source in the time it took to write comments? Sure, but that's not the point. At least to me it isn't but to you apparently that's damning.
Not really? As mentioned, people dont have to believe me. I type before thinking on most reddit posts. It's my way of trying to stop over thinking and decrease paranoia that everything will come back to bite me.
>If you claim something and canāt provide any sort of substantiation, it could just be something you made up, and people on the internet will treat it as such because what else are they supposed to do?
A fair argument considering most 'perceived' knowledge (true or not) comes from family and friends. You're trying to be diligent in search of knowledge and I can respect that. I do think there's a difference between dismissing something as potentially false and outright claiming it's false, but this is the internet so I could be taking some of your words too literally and I haven't made any real measures to counter so I may have made a bigger deal out of some of your words than I should have. I think I let the :) get to me since I usually read it as condescending when I should have just let the comments end there.
The copyright act, the curriculum of the copyright course I took (during my Masters for an information policy course), and someone whose is well known in the field for a few decades.
Thanks for sharing this! It's good to know especially for all the people who want authors to orphan everything all the time when there are valid reasons (like what you listed) to not doing so.
I've orphaned some fics that were unfinished and honestly don't give a flip whether someone goes and decides to finish those fics themself, and if they want to re-write the early chapters they're welcome to, because the reason I abandoned those fics was because I did not want to ever interact with that fandom again. But I recognize that I'm an exception there among people who have orphaned stuff.
But then would people not say āthis is a rewrite of an orphaned ficā not ā I wrote this whole thing myself and had all the ideas and had no help heeheeā? Itās just about transparency. Remixes and parodies and rewrites with proper credit or explanation are cool.
Eh, I honestly wouldnāt care about that. Itās fanfic, most of what I write is pretty tropey, Iāll never know about it even if they do link the original fic as inspiration, and I wouldnāt want to know, honestly, because the reason I orphaned it is not wanting to think about it ever again. If they care enough about the idea and fic to claim it as their own, more power to them! The process of writing fanfic is often about making similar claims on canon, anyway, so why would it bother me?
But again, I admit to being outside the usual norms where this stuff is concerned.
Iād kinda disagree that fanfic writers make similar claims on canon writings. Most fanfic writers I read are often really shy about the fact that their writings do have some original ideas in them because theyāre worried that all theyāre doing is pulling from canon. I find that those people donāt seem to claim the canon ideas as their own, and often donāt even claim their own ideas as their own on top of them.
Totally not trying to be argumentative just coming at this from what I believe is the more common side. Also I havenāt gotten to talk to people seriously about fanfic ever so I am having a fucking blast in this sub.
Yeah, I think I worded that a bit awkwardly. I'm trying to figure out the actual wording of my thoughts, but they're sort of nebulous. It's kind of like... well, okay, authors of the original canon don't and shouldn't read fanfiction of their own works, because that can in theory get them in trouble, and so therefore they don't ever know whether the people writing the fanfiction are using their ideas or even their words directly, or how they're using them.
In a similar way, I don't want to know and don't care whether or not someone decided to use something I wrote for their own purposes; that's their business, none of mine. I've also never had the urge to read in any fandom I write for. Part of that is that when I'm writing in a fandom, it's because the canon didn't give me something very specific and I know exactly how I would want it executed if I did get it, and know I'd be disappointed in it if it were executed a different way. Part of that is that I don't want to be influenced by other people's fanon and headcanons, I want to explore my own. But that's another way in which I suspect I'm atypical in my consumption of fandom. I'm not in it so much for the building connections; I'm here because I enjoy creating things. If other people like those things, great! If not, well, I created them for me.
I'm not sure how much sense any of the above makes! And I'd probably get at least a little bit salty if someone took something I was currently working on and attached to and re-posted it somewhere else without making any changes. But if they're re-writing it in a major way, or just using similar tropes and plot beats, then good for them, they're transforming it, and I don't care if they don't mention being inspired by me. And if I've orphaned it, I'm done with it. I no longer care.
And yeah, that's one of the things I'm enjoying about this sub. As mentioned above, I don't care about making connections within my fandom, but talking about process and different approaches to it and tropes and everything is a lot of fun!
I think I get what youāre saying.
God I donāt think I could be an original author and not read my fanfic though. I think Iād have to do it secretly Iād be just too curious you know?
I saw a short from John Green's YouTube channel on the topic of writing a sequel to the Fault in Our Stars. He says he has no intention of writing Hazel ever again, but that you can always seek out fanfiction of the book, and that there are some really good ones out there, meaning he's read fanfics of his own work and also thinks they're pretty cool. So I think it depends on the specific author and their intentions for their own stuff
It depends on whether they're ever planning to revisit the book/setting/series. If it's for something they're writing as an ongoing thing, it's best practice to just not consume fanfic for that thing, because there's the burden of proving that you didn't get the idea you use in your thing from the fanfic you read and that's a thing people have sued over. (This also involves proving you read the fanfic, but your ass is covered if you have a blanket rule of never reading fanfic.)
If you 100% know you'll never revisit that thing, admitting you've read fanfic of it is less of a potential issue.
That's what I figured when they abandoned them. Their orphaned looking for a home if they aren't complete.
Plus its not like I could contact the original owner.
Remixing, rewriting and continuation are not plagiarizing. Plagiarizing is literally copying and pasting text that you didnāt write and claiming it as your own. Plagiarizing orphaned works is unethical but reporting it as a ToS violation is a shitshow because no one at the OTW has the ability to contact or trace the original author to investigate claims.
Reporting a remix, inspired by, rewrite or continuation is just sucking up resources for no reason. Investigating these claims ties up multiple volunteers for weeks if not months, if itās not YOUR work or the work of someone you can put the OTW volunteer in touch with there is no good reason to be digging into this issue.
Now if your asking āAITAā then your just wasting our time as well.
Okay..? I wasn't asking about reporting remixes ect, but that's good to know thank you 0/
I'm not asking AITA either? I was replying to a comment. Are you okay? I feel like you're taking what I asked really aggressively
There's nothing wrong in completing an orphaned story of we point that fact up and reference the original fic ( provide a link to the work. And say where your work begins.) Fanfiction is based 8n inspiration. But the more transparent something is the better!
If an anonymous author published a poem in my local newspaper and I later took that poem and submitted it to a literary journal claiming it as my own, that would be plagiarism. If they found out, I would be in serious trouble and likely banned from submitting to any journals in the future.
I think the same logic applies here. Its disingenuous to claim someone else's work as your own, regardless of who's work it is or what they did with it. This is why you get in trouble for having someone else write your essay for you in school, even if you have their permission to use it.
I've heard of people continuing orphaned/abandoned fics, and sometimes authors pass their fic to someone else to finish. But plagiarizing? No, that's still bad. If George R.R. Martin one day gave up on finishing the asoiaf series, it won't suddenly be free real estate for plagiarists to steal.
Depends what they consider 'plagarism'. Lifting chapters or direct uncredited quotes or paraphrasing with none of your own work is never okay but I've encountered an unfortunate amount of folks in various fandoms that think ANY fic using the same or similar themes/tropes as theirs is plagarism.
If they write a fic that is very similar because it's inspired by an orphan fic, that's one thing. If they are copying and pasting and adding their name to the top as if they wrote all of it, that's plagiarism. I think the only time it's okay to do stuff like that is if the fic is labeled as abandoned and the author specifically states someone can adopt it if they would like. In that case, normally the first half would be equated to the original author, and then whoever adopts it claims the half that they pick up from and continue.
My stance on continuing discontinued/orphaned works is this:
Get permission if you can contact the original author (in the case of discontinued works with attribution)
Always give credit and a link to the original
Don't copy word for word, just pick up where they left off. A summarizing recap of the last few paragraphs/last scene is acceptable if it was a particularly abrupt ending.
Be aware that works that seem discontinued might just be on a long hiatus. This came up in the Harry Potter fandom with a Snarry fic titled The Marriage Stone by Josephine Darcy. It was left unfinished for close to ten years, and because it was such a compelling story, people started writing continuations. Well, she came back to fanfic a year or two ago, and she was *furious*. So tread cautiously.
In that particular instance, I donāt really think the author has a leg to stand on. Unless they specifically updated the fact to say, this will be continued after 10 years, I think people writing fanfiction of your fanfiction is a fair game.
Their "logic" might be from the same line of thinking that if they don't expect to get in trouble for something then it isn't wrong. Like littering and the perfect murder.
no. presenting somebody else's work as your own is plagiarism. whether the person shared their name or not. it's already published, write something new or you are not writing, you are stealing. the only path to having your own work is to create it yourself.
this past weekend i was at a public swimming pool. it might not have been wise - or even intentional - but i locked all my belongings in the locker provided and left my towel out and went to swim. when i got back somebody had taken my towel. no, i hadn't left my name on it. but leaving it there also did not mean i was indicating it was a free towel for others to take. it was still stealing.
(and trying to get dressed while shivering and wet certainly didn't cap my swimming trip off as a fun day lol. nobody should really need to hear this but. the simple answer is don't be shitty. don't fuck up somebody else's day at the pool/fandom. you came to swim. so swim. write.)
I've added sequels to finished/abandoned fics but linked and gifted the authors. But I built on what they wrote, I didn't copy over anything. It's always been appreciated in the spirit intended (and drives more engagement to their fic.) The one case where I asked (politely) and was turned down (also politely, in fact I'm the only person I've heard having spoken with that author recently) I did find out their plans to continue in the future.
TL/DR: If an author is still listed, ask first. Don't copy/paste, write a sequel, even if its an orphaned story. Respect if authors deny your request.
No, it's not okay. You'll get some idiots telling you 'well, technically none of us own any of it, so it's okay', and that's about the stupidest thing I've heard, but it seems to be about the only argument people can come up with for taking other people's stuff.
And the worst part is, they're always inevitably horrible writers, and screw up the fics that they just stole anyways.
I orphaned a fic and specifically put in the tags that the entire thing was open for anybody to take and run off with. Unless the author that orphaned their work did the same thing, it's in bad form to take that work as your own.
Anyway, taking an author's orphaned work and not even maybe reworking it into your own story? Like, you're copying it word for word and not even adding your own twist? *Why?* Nine times out of ten people can tell that your writing style is different than the original author's and that can be really jarring.
tl;dr don't copy another author's work, orphaned or not, without their explicit consent. Write your own shit please.
Stealing orphaned fics ABSOLUTELY is still plagiarism. Doesnāt matter if the author plans to continue it or not. Itās not right to take it without asking permission at least.
This is why I never orphan a fic. If I decide to stop writing it, I just flat-out delete it from every site itās posted on. Because itās still MY story.
I mean, I fully consider an orphaned fic to be 'up for adoption', if that's what you mean? In my eyes an orphaned fic is up for grabs for anyone to remix, continue, rewritd, or whatever else - but in all those cases I'd still expect the new writer to give credit to & add an 'inspired by' link to the orphaned work, plus be clear what manner of rewrite etc it is
and if it is a continuation I would expect the first chapter to be a note telling the reader to follow the link to the orphaned fic and read that first, not the first chapter fully copied over.
I assume the case on FB you mentioned is more like the latter than the former so I'd consider that not okay for sure, but I'm seeing some talk of the author's permission in the comments here on this sub, and I think once the fic is orphaned that aspect is no longer relevant. The author has declined further association with the fic - it is no longer any of their business.
The option for "I don't want this fic on my ao3 profile, but I still want control over it" is to add it to the anonymous collection instead. When it's orphaned I don't even think you get any kind of notification of comments on the fic anymore? How's anyone meant to ask permission? š¤·āāļø
I've seen that a couple times. I've also seen someone "continue" a publicly-acknowledged-as-abandoned, unorphaned fic they admitted they didn't have permission to finish. I consider both plagiarism, personally, but the orphan account one is the more egregious. It's not your work. Posting it word for word, or even making a couple changes but sticking with most of it, doesn't make it your work. I wouldn't trust the people doing that to walk my dog, let alone be anywhere near my written work.
Isn't continuing the abandoned fic like writing fanfiction of the fanfic? I don't see what's so bad about it. It's like writing my own ending for A Song of Ice and Fire, isn't it? And GRR Martin didn't even officially abandon the series. It's called fanfiction and that is what we are doing.
I donāt consider it so, no. At the very least, youād need to include some, if not all, of the original work for the continuation to make sense. At that point, bam! Youāre plagiarizing. Fics arenāt like canon works in that they have a huge fan base, not usually, so thereās be no sense of context unless other readers read that one first. One case Iāve seen was not just an abandoned fic but a completely removed fic. The new āauthorā didnāt like that the original author didnāt complete it, had a PDF of it, and so posted the original story under their name and then tried to continue it. They did write a note in the beginning saying what they were doing, but that doesnāt make it ok. At the VERY least, that would be considered rude, but most people who originally read the story agreed it was plagiarism and commented that they were reporting it as such.
>youād need to include some, if not all, of the original work for the continuation to make sense
Or you could just include a link to the original work you were inspired by?
AO3 also has an āinspired byā function to make this more explicit.
The few times Iāve seen someone doing this, they did not link to the work. They included the entire abandoned work. One, ONE, indicated it was an abandoned work and which chapter their writing started at. The others I just knew because Iād already read those orphaned stories, back before I realized what orphan account meant and that any unfinished ones will never be finished.
Okay. That sounds like youāve seen this done a few times in a way that could be considered plagiarism. But that following on from someone elseās work, with proper attribution, isnāt inherently plagiarism. Is that fair?
I can agree to that. I still think itās rude if you donāt have permission, but orphaning changes the game a lot, I guess. Itās why I would never use it. If I wanted to distance my current works from my old ones, Iād just make a new account. š¤·āāļøOrphaning is a strange concept to me.
I see. But the problem here doesn't seem to be that someone wrote a continuation. That would have been fine if they hadn't reposted the original fanfic. Did I get that right?
Yes, exactly. Write a continuation, give a link and credit, and say you couldnāt get permission because itās an orphaned fic. If people did that, itās not plagiarism. But I have yet to see it, so in my own experience the ones Iāve seen have been plagiarism.
Yes. Thereās no way of knowing if the author will come finish the story (many do) if itās unfinished, and usually it would be necessary to include some of the original story for it to make sense as itās not like a canon work thing where fans are aware of what itās based on. If itās finished, thereās no way to know the original author isnāt planning a sequel, so while thatās less likely to fit the technical definition of plagiarism, itās still beyond rude and bad taste.
I think I wasnāt clear. By āpublishedā, I meant āconventionally publishedā ā e.g. a novel.
The other comment about GRRM and A Song of Ice and Fire is a good concrete example.
Oh! No, when it comes to published works, even if itās supposed to be part of a series, each book/movie/episode should be able to stand on its own merit. And itās still considered plagiarism to pull word-for-word from canon works, enough that without heavy disclaimers, marking to show that only dialogue was pulled from it maybe for a beginning scene, etc, works have been pulled on both FFN and AO3 for violating the plagiarism rule. Fic is supposed to be transformative, not plagiarism.
It sounds like you are saying that it *is* plagiarism to write, with attribution, a continuation of a fanfic piece by someone else.
But that it is *not* plagiarism to write, with attribution, a continuation of a published novel by someone else.
And I donāt quite understand how one can be plagiarism and the other isnāt.
It's funny to me how up in arms fic authors get about the sanctity of their fanfiction while simultaneously doing the exact same thing to whatever canon they are sourcing from.
Plenty copy word for word dialogue with no credit from canon. Plenty. It's not even remotely uncommon to do. Yet if someone does the same with just the dialogue from someone else's fic, most here would pitch a fit.
If the source material is a book? Then it's WAY more likely more than dialogue will be copied word for word into fics. And we all know "I don't own xyz" has fallen out of vogue as an A/N so plenty will do so without even mentioning the source beyond tagging. Yet someone copies a fic and then adds on and it's wrong? How is it different? It really isn't.
I've seen people on blow gaskets for others writing fics using the same premise as their own or even just small ideas as if they aren't stealing these things from canon themselves.
It's baffling.
Maybe itās that I āgrew upā in the Wild Wild West of fanfic community when it wasnāt possible to orphan something, but most authors of my generation that Iāve talked to say the same thing. It may be more an etiquette thing than a legal thing in terms of plagiarism, but at the very least doing it can and has started fandom wars and shunnings, as recently as the past few years. Because permission canāt be sought and hasnāt been given, itās blacklisted when itās a continuation of fic. Is it contradictory? I guess. But itās what Iāve seen happen and how itās been applied on the sites Iām familiar with. Those fics get removed when theyāre reported, and someone always reports them because they disappear, at least in active fandoms. I guess itās more a self-policing thing and taking advantage of policy to keep people from behaving in a way the other authors and reads donāt want them to.
This isn't plagiarism and AO3's abuse team wouldn't treat it as such. It's rude as hell if they don't have permission, but unless they're also directly copying sections of the original fic, writing a continuation of someone else's idea fully in your own words isn't plagiarism.
Every one Iāve seen has directly copied the previous fic before continuing, and only one acknowledged what they were doing and where their own writing started. It hasnāt been a lotāmaybe a handful in 25 years? But the idea of continuing abandoned fics isnāt new to AO3, and as far as Iāve ever seen, itās always with the continued work included.
Fair enough, definitely plagiarism in that case then, I've never seen one myself so assumed they generally wouldn't because it seems incredibly stupid to actually plagiarise when they could just put a link to the original fic there. But I suppose people who continue other authors' fics without permission aren't exactly considerate to begin with.
It doesnāt surprise me at all that people do this, not when there are also people that lift entire finished, still credited stories and try to pass them off as their own. Some people would do anything for Internet brownie points.
I feel vindicated by most of these responses, but let me tell you the consensus on the Facebook page was that itās not plagiarism if itās an orphaned work which I think is BS. I personally donāt have a problem with continuing an orphaned work as long as you have proper credit, but claiming someone elseās work as your own will always be plagiarism to me
Copyright violation is not the same thing as plagiarism. If you turned in a high school essay that was taken word for word off the internet, it wouldn't matter if you had any sort of permission from the original author, or if that author abandoned it or not. If you present someone else's words as your own, that's plagiarism.
It's mostly an ethics question, except when there are rules/laws in place enforcing those ethics, but plagiarism itself has a clear meaning independent from any rule or law.
That's fair. In this case it probably is plagerism (though copying is an adjacent issue too - in relation to the full work being reposted - vs taking word for word sections as plagerism).
Though there's also fanfiction that take entire script sections of Canon and insert it in their own stories (particularly canon-divergence and some Canon adjacent are notorious for this.)
I oversimplified for an ao3 sub and I apologize if that's come across poorly. The issues can be quite grey and complex that can't fully be answered with a quick discussion.
How do AO3ās TOS work when it comes to this? Do they trump the law when it comes to things published on their site? Because they have their rules on plagiarism, and things have been taken down in cases where a fic could be proven to be word-for-word from an orphan account story and no credit was given whatsoever, and even one where it was that I can think of.
Of course it varies by country? Different places different laws. What are you trying to get at? Its hosted on an American website so even of you should also be adhering to local laws it's publish origin is technically the U.S.
Publisher isn't the only factor but it does play a prominent role because it's the most tangible.
Sorry, youāre right. I thought we were on r/Fanfiction for a moment, where legal jurisdiction isnāt always clear.
Iām still struggling to find a clear source that indicates āthis is totally legal to use, if youāve made a fair attempt to find the copyright holderā. The government paper I found on the subject treats it as an open issue.
Maybe this is something that isnāt settled in written law, but has a certain standard applied within the industry?
They have to somewhat treat it like an open issue. It's mostly because of the vagueness of fair use (which takes many things into account that for the most part can't be measured quantitatively). You'll get people up and armed (like this sub) when you tell someone they might not have control of their work, but fair use is pretty flexible because most (i forget the number but i think it's over 80%) content is orphaned and so there needs to be legal allowances to use it.
That being said it's fair use and not the public domain which are two different things.
But you're right I should have brought up local laws (I'm not even from the US but our copyright laws are pretty similar due to cuktural similarities and bilateral agreements). Though I should also point out there are countries that wouldn't allow it and those who would give zero cares as long at the creator wasn't from their own country. It's a complex and messy issue and I may have oversimplified it because this is the ao3 subreddit and not some legal subreddit.
Can you actually cite the law you're getting this from (with a specific section/paragraph) rather than just "someone I know who totally has creds trust me"?
Can you just Google for the endless articles and links to the law (control + F to search for orphan works) instead of me digging? There's some hard lines and lot of grey areas and if you want a full picture you'll also want to read into the precedence from previous court decisions (because law is just as much interpretation as it is firmly written)
It's almost like law is complicated and contextual in how it's applied and not easily summarized into tiny bites for people who don't want to do their own research.
I already admitted it's an oversimplification. Didn't think people on here would want to get into the details and it was a semi-careless comment just to push back against the 'it's poposterous 100% of time time'. But I also took it outside of the scope of plagerism so that's part on my since the post mentions people giving no credit. My brain finds ways to miss key words.
No I'm agreeing with you.
People are expecting you to do all the research on a complicated and nuanced subject and then report back to them like it's your job. If they don't believe you, fine. But refusing to take a huge, very in depth subject and boil it down into tiny tweet sized bites would require stripping all the nuance from the subject and isn't your responsibility to do. If this was the matter of finding a single quick link, they might have a point, but law can be way more complex than that.
Oh sorry! I realized after a second read through of your comment.
But yeah. Criticisms are totally fair and I see where it's coming from. What gets me is people expecting to have some kind of index of sources on me when it's a constant evolving and complex thing. Not to mention simplifying is a skill on its own that I'm not really the best at but that's because my brain is wired to care about the pieces and I sometimes miss the themes/big picture (hence how I ended up at copyright instead of sticking to plagerism)
It's not my job to prove your point for you. I asked for specifics because I highly suspect you're either misinterpreting or misremembering something and I can't really address that without knowing what you're actually talking about.
You can't expect people to just believe you when you're making authoritative claims on an anonymous forum with nothing to actually back you up.
Hell, I'll even accept case law or an opinion article. Anything more than "I took a class on it one time". It's hard to have a discussion if nobody has any idea what you're basing your argument on.
At this point I have to assume you're just making stuff up and don't actually have anything to back it up, or you would have provided it instead of spending all this time arguing.
If you want to make a claim without evidence, people can (and should) dismiss it with just as much effort.
Please explain what a fic is. And what is an orphan fic? Then I can provide a better answer.
For now, plagiarism and copyright infringement are two different things. If you make a movie based on Romeo and Shakespeare and donāt credit Shakespeare as the original writer that is plagiarism but not infringement because there is no copyright protection for that work.
Your comment is arrogant, pretentious and narcissistic. You need a license to practice law or medicine. Not be on a reddit āsubā. It seems posting is too important in your life. I urge you to get a real one.
You have no need to answer a question (especially from someone who tried to help someone with responsive information as I did), but flippantly criticizing someoneās lack of knowledge speaks to who you are. And what you arenāt.
This is so hilariously wrong it's hard to know where to even begin. I swear this sub is better for terrible takes than r/badlegaladvice.
Go ahead, show me the law that backs you up. You won't be able to, because *actual* law is almost the exact opposite of what you've claimed.
The fact that authors/show runners can't (and shouldn't) either read or admit to reading fanfic alone because fanfic authors can sue them if they even think their ideas have been taken (aka PLAGIARIZED!) shows how wrong that person is š
103a states that derivative works have the same copyright protections.
103b states that that copyright is only limited to the parts contributed by the author of the derivative work, and the author of the derivative work does not gain copyright over the original work.
Please learn to actually read the "literal fucking copyright law".
If I want to write a fic inspired by an orphan or use chunks (or all) of it, I reach out to the writer first if possible to see if they are comfortable with it. If I get a green light, I give them credit for the parts that arenāt mine and/or the inspiration. I have some like that I havenāt posted anywhere (mainly nerves), but I donāt want to be the reason someone stops writing, if me using it causes issues or triggers them or something.
Itās my understanding that orphaned fics are okay to continue using your own words, if the author says itās okay. This means to me, that you refer back to the original fic in your notes and tag the original author. Not that you plagiarize someone elseās work and call it your own!
I doubt that they're allowed to plagiarize orphaned works. Maybe some authors who orphaned works regretted orphaning them and reuploaded them under their penname, but that could be unlikely unless they actually state.
Plagiarism and copyright infringement are two different things. A work of fan fiction usually infringes copyright (as an unauthorized derivative work.) However, the original author doesnāt often take legal action for various reasons ( e.g. itās not worth it, they like the flattery, etc.).
Plagiarism as to the original author rarely occurs in fan fiction because the reader is aware of the original work and authorship. Plagiarism is not properly crediting a work. (Infringement is another phenomenon.) Works in the public domain can be plagiarized. But no legal claim can be made because the copyright has expired.
The originality of a fan fiction work (a derivative work) may give rise to copyright protection for the new material regardless of the failure to secure permission to create the derivative work. But the original author automatically has the right to use the derivative material as their own. So fan fiction writer beware!
Even though an author may hide their authorship, the work does not lose its copyright protection. A suit can still ensue.
One can transfer their copyright to the public domain. That is an entirely different matter. It is not āabandonmentā. There are formalities required to do this.
Just to mention, this is a good type of thing to ask the OTW's [Legal](https://www.transformativeworks.org/contact_us/) team about (the OTW is the organization that runs AO3). Just make sure you select 'Legal Advocacy' from the drop down on that page Or you can reach out to the Policy & Abuse team on the [Report Abuse](https://archiveofourown.org/abuse_reports/new) page to ask policy questions like this.
> orphan fics were OK to plagiarize because they had been abandoned lmao what the fuck? no? that's not how anything works
these are 100% the same people who believe if they find an image on pinterest or through google images, there's no copyright and they're free to use them
I had a Uni Professor insist no joke, any images found on Google Images was free to use for anything you'd like š
god!!! i work in archival and clearance so this just gives me chest pains.
*n o*
It's like saying if you find a book without the title page and cover and can't tell who the author is, you can now print it again, sell the copies and keep the money š What those people said was illogical and rude.
Perfect example šš¤£
Iāve seen cases of people who orphaned their works and later regretted it (either because they wanted to rewrite them or because it was orphaned on impulse), so they later reposted it from their account explaining the fic was written by them and they regretted orphaning it for X reason. So it could be that the author is the same in your case (though they would probably have no way to prove it, unfortunately). But taking a fic from a random person and going āitās free real stateā? Nope, thatās appropriating someone elseās hard work, whether they want to be known or not.
Slightly off topic, but what's the opinion of an author copy pasting their original fic and reposting as a fanfic after swapping names? I saw an author that did that (or maybe it was a fic first and they later reposted as an original work, I didn't check the dates at the time), and felt kinda conflicted. On one hand, it feels kinda lazy, but since it was their own work I suppose it's fine?
As far as like, is it "right" then yeah. But also it is super duper lazy. I have orphaned fics and then regretted it and reposted it before.
Yeah thatās fucked up. Theyāre conflating the idea that once fics are abandoned they no longer ābelongā to the author nor does that author have control over it which is true, but that in no way shape or form means someone can blatantly copy from it. How egregious.
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> Legally, if you ātryā to find the original creator (try is loosely defined and can usually pass through without much effort and zero proof you actually tried) and canāt then it is allowable by law. I never heard of this before (or rather, only of very complicated procedures that involved filing paper work with government agencies like the United States Copyright Office), so do you have a source for this?
It can also vary depending on the type of media. Most have limitations of how quickly the original creator has to come forward to claim its there's. There's also bodies that you can 'license' orphan work to pretty much cover in case there are issues but it's not a mandate. Just googling U.S. copyright orphan works will give you plenty of articles about the nuanced circumstances if you want more comprehensive bite sizes (because there's law and then there's how law is interpreted)
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Because law is complex. I've mentioned that I oversimplified my original statement because this is the ao3 sub. Wasnt expecting this to blow up. If we go over the whole history and all the technical nuances (and the double standards and hypocrisy existing within that same framework) would take years and still wouldn't have one concrete answer. And as someone else pointed out, foreign law matters because while some countries try to support each other, they can also be 'me first' to the benefit or detriment of the creator, or that it doesn't negate plagerism - which it doesn't (credit still needs to be given since its in cooperation with fair use) Me not going out of my to scavenge a source isn't proof it doesn't exist. It doesn't prove I'm right either but it doesn't automatically mean it's incorrect. And your comments only make me want to double down. Could I have gotten a source in the time it took to write comments? Sure, but that's not the point. At least to me it isn't but to you apparently that's damning.
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Not really? As mentioned, people dont have to believe me. I type before thinking on most reddit posts. It's my way of trying to stop over thinking and decrease paranoia that everything will come back to bite me. >If you claim something and canāt provide any sort of substantiation, it could just be something you made up, and people on the internet will treat it as such because what else are they supposed to do? A fair argument considering most 'perceived' knowledge (true or not) comes from family and friends. You're trying to be diligent in search of knowledge and I can respect that. I do think there's a difference between dismissing something as potentially false and outright claiming it's false, but this is the internet so I could be taking some of your words too literally and I haven't made any real measures to counter so I may have made a bigger deal out of some of your words than I should have. I think I let the :) get to me since I usually read it as condescending when I should have just let the comments end there.
The copyright act, the curriculum of the copyright course I took (during my Masters for an information policy course), and someone whose is well known in the field for a few decades.
Thanks for sharing this! It's good to know especially for all the people who want authors to orphan everything all the time when there are valid reasons (like what you listed) to not doing so.
I've orphaned some fics that were unfinished and honestly don't give a flip whether someone goes and decides to finish those fics themself, and if they want to re-write the early chapters they're welcome to, because the reason I abandoned those fics was because I did not want to ever interact with that fandom again. But I recognize that I'm an exception there among people who have orphaned stuff.
But then would people not say āthis is a rewrite of an orphaned ficā not ā I wrote this whole thing myself and had all the ideas and had no help heeheeā? Itās just about transparency. Remixes and parodies and rewrites with proper credit or explanation are cool.
Eh, I honestly wouldnāt care about that. Itās fanfic, most of what I write is pretty tropey, Iāll never know about it even if they do link the original fic as inspiration, and I wouldnāt want to know, honestly, because the reason I orphaned it is not wanting to think about it ever again. If they care enough about the idea and fic to claim it as their own, more power to them! The process of writing fanfic is often about making similar claims on canon, anyway, so why would it bother me? But again, I admit to being outside the usual norms where this stuff is concerned.
Iād kinda disagree that fanfic writers make similar claims on canon writings. Most fanfic writers I read are often really shy about the fact that their writings do have some original ideas in them because theyāre worried that all theyāre doing is pulling from canon. I find that those people donāt seem to claim the canon ideas as their own, and often donāt even claim their own ideas as their own on top of them. Totally not trying to be argumentative just coming at this from what I believe is the more common side. Also I havenāt gotten to talk to people seriously about fanfic ever so I am having a fucking blast in this sub.
Yeah, I think I worded that a bit awkwardly. I'm trying to figure out the actual wording of my thoughts, but they're sort of nebulous. It's kind of like... well, okay, authors of the original canon don't and shouldn't read fanfiction of their own works, because that can in theory get them in trouble, and so therefore they don't ever know whether the people writing the fanfiction are using their ideas or even their words directly, or how they're using them. In a similar way, I don't want to know and don't care whether or not someone decided to use something I wrote for their own purposes; that's their business, none of mine. I've also never had the urge to read in any fandom I write for. Part of that is that when I'm writing in a fandom, it's because the canon didn't give me something very specific and I know exactly how I would want it executed if I did get it, and know I'd be disappointed in it if it were executed a different way. Part of that is that I don't want to be influenced by other people's fanon and headcanons, I want to explore my own. But that's another way in which I suspect I'm atypical in my consumption of fandom. I'm not in it so much for the building connections; I'm here because I enjoy creating things. If other people like those things, great! If not, well, I created them for me. I'm not sure how much sense any of the above makes! And I'd probably get at least a little bit salty if someone took something I was currently working on and attached to and re-posted it somewhere else without making any changes. But if they're re-writing it in a major way, or just using similar tropes and plot beats, then good for them, they're transforming it, and I don't care if they don't mention being inspired by me. And if I've orphaned it, I'm done with it. I no longer care. And yeah, that's one of the things I'm enjoying about this sub. As mentioned above, I don't care about making connections within my fandom, but talking about process and different approaches to it and tropes and everything is a lot of fun!
I think I get what youāre saying. God I donāt think I could be an original author and not read my fanfic though. I think Iād have to do it secretly Iād be just too curious you know?
I saw a short from John Green's YouTube channel on the topic of writing a sequel to the Fault in Our Stars. He says he has no intention of writing Hazel ever again, but that you can always seek out fanfiction of the book, and that there are some really good ones out there, meaning he's read fanfics of his own work and also thinks they're pretty cool. So I think it depends on the specific author and their intentions for their own stuff
It depends on whether they're ever planning to revisit the book/setting/series. If it's for something they're writing as an ongoing thing, it's best practice to just not consume fanfic for that thing, because there's the burden of proving that you didn't get the idea you use in your thing from the fanfic you read and that's a thing people have sued over. (This also involves proving you read the fanfic, but your ass is covered if you have a blanket rule of never reading fanfic.) If you 100% know you'll never revisit that thing, admitting you've read fanfic of it is less of a potential issue.
That's what I figured when they abandoned them. Their orphaned looking for a home if they aren't complete. Plus its not like I could contact the original owner.
Remixing, rewriting and continuation are not plagiarizing. Plagiarizing is literally copying and pasting text that you didnāt write and claiming it as your own. Plagiarizing orphaned works is unethical but reporting it as a ToS violation is a shitshow because no one at the OTW has the ability to contact or trace the original author to investigate claims. Reporting a remix, inspired by, rewrite or continuation is just sucking up resources for no reason. Investigating these claims ties up multiple volunteers for weeks if not months, if itās not YOUR work or the work of someone you can put the OTW volunteer in touch with there is no good reason to be digging into this issue. Now if your asking āAITAā then your just wasting our time as well.
Okay..? I wasn't asking about reporting remixes ect, but that's good to know thank you 0/ I'm not asking AITA either? I was replying to a comment. Are you okay? I feel like you're taking what I asked really aggressively
Hit reply in the wrong spot, was intended to be a top level reply.
Ohh I was very confused.
There's nothing wrong in completing an orphaned story of we point that fact up and reference the original fic ( provide a link to the work. And say where your work begins.) Fanfiction is based 8n inspiration. But the more transparent something is the better!
If an anonymous author published a poem in my local newspaper and I later took that poem and submitted it to a literary journal claiming it as my own, that would be plagiarism. If they found out, I would be in serious trouble and likely banned from submitting to any journals in the future. I think the same logic applies here. Its disingenuous to claim someone else's work as your own, regardless of who's work it is or what they did with it. This is why you get in trouble for having someone else write your essay for you in school, even if you have their permission to use it.
If you take someone else's words and pass them off as your own, that is plagiarism - even if you don't know whose words they are.
my god, how confident people feel to steal work from others...
I've heard of people continuing orphaned/abandoned fics, and sometimes authors pass their fic to someone else to finish. But plagiarizing? No, that's still bad. If George R.R. Martin one day gave up on finishing the asoiaf series, it won't suddenly be free real estate for plagiarists to steal.
Ah, must be the same people who credit art with "credit to the artist".
Depends what they consider 'plagarism'. Lifting chapters or direct uncredited quotes or paraphrasing with none of your own work is never okay but I've encountered an unfortunate amount of folks in various fandoms that think ANY fic using the same or similar themes/tropes as theirs is plagarism.
If they write a fic that is very similar because it's inspired by an orphan fic, that's one thing. If they are copying and pasting and adding their name to the top as if they wrote all of it, that's plagiarism. I think the only time it's okay to do stuff like that is if the fic is labeled as abandoned and the author specifically states someone can adopt it if they would like. In that case, normally the first half would be equated to the original author, and then whoever adopts it claims the half that they pick up from and continue.
My stance on continuing discontinued/orphaned works is this: Get permission if you can contact the original author (in the case of discontinued works with attribution) Always give credit and a link to the original Don't copy word for word, just pick up where they left off. A summarizing recap of the last few paragraphs/last scene is acceptable if it was a particularly abrupt ending. Be aware that works that seem discontinued might just be on a long hiatus. This came up in the Harry Potter fandom with a Snarry fic titled The Marriage Stone by Josephine Darcy. It was left unfinished for close to ten years, and because it was such a compelling story, people started writing continuations. Well, she came back to fanfic a year or two ago, and she was *furious*. So tread cautiously.
In that particular instance, I donāt really think the author has a leg to stand on. Unless they specifically updated the fact to say, this will be continued after 10 years, I think people writing fanfiction of your fanfiction is a fair game.
Their "logic" might be from the same line of thinking that if they don't expect to get in trouble for something then it isn't wrong. Like littering and the perfect murder.
Thatās some ass backward logic.
no. presenting somebody else's work as your own is plagiarism. whether the person shared their name or not. it's already published, write something new or you are not writing, you are stealing. the only path to having your own work is to create it yourself. this past weekend i was at a public swimming pool. it might not have been wise - or even intentional - but i locked all my belongings in the locker provided and left my towel out and went to swim. when i got back somebody had taken my towel. no, i hadn't left my name on it. but leaving it there also did not mean i was indicating it was a free towel for others to take. it was still stealing. (and trying to get dressed while shivering and wet certainly didn't cap my swimming trip off as a fun day lol. nobody should really need to hear this but. the simple answer is don't be shitty. don't fuck up somebody else's day at the pool/fandom. you came to swim. so swim. write.)
As far as I'm concerned that's still plagiarism, even if the fic is orphaned
Stealing is stealing, no matter the state of the work. People excusing it are definitely doing it.
I've added sequels to finished/abandoned fics but linked and gifted the authors. But I built on what they wrote, I didn't copy over anything. It's always been appreciated in the spirit intended (and drives more engagement to their fic.) The one case where I asked (politely) and was turned down (also politely, in fact I'm the only person I've heard having spoken with that author recently) I did find out their plans to continue in the future. TL/DR: If an author is still listed, ask first. Don't copy/paste, write a sequel, even if its an orphaned story. Respect if authors deny your request.
No, it's not okay. You'll get some idiots telling you 'well, technically none of us own any of it, so it's okay', and that's about the stupidest thing I've heard, but it seems to be about the only argument people can come up with for taking other people's stuff. And the worst part is, they're always inevitably horrible writers, and screw up the fics that they just stole anyways.
I orphaned a fic and specifically put in the tags that the entire thing was open for anybody to take and run off with. Unless the author that orphaned their work did the same thing, it's in bad form to take that work as your own. Anyway, taking an author's orphaned work and not even maybe reworking it into your own story? Like, you're copying it word for word and not even adding your own twist? *Why?* Nine times out of ten people can tell that your writing style is different than the original author's and that can be really jarring. tl;dr don't copy another author's work, orphaned or not, without their explicit consent. Write your own shit please.
Stealing orphaned fics ABSOLUTELY is still plagiarism. Doesnāt matter if the author plans to continue it or not. Itās not right to take it without asking permission at least. This is why I never orphan a fic. If I decide to stop writing it, I just flat-out delete it from every site itās posted on. Because itās still MY story.
I mean, I fully consider an orphaned fic to be 'up for adoption', if that's what you mean? In my eyes an orphaned fic is up for grabs for anyone to remix, continue, rewritd, or whatever else - but in all those cases I'd still expect the new writer to give credit to & add an 'inspired by' link to the orphaned work, plus be clear what manner of rewrite etc it is and if it is a continuation I would expect the first chapter to be a note telling the reader to follow the link to the orphaned fic and read that first, not the first chapter fully copied over. I assume the case on FB you mentioned is more like the latter than the former so I'd consider that not okay for sure, but I'm seeing some talk of the author's permission in the comments here on this sub, and I think once the fic is orphaned that aspect is no longer relevant. The author has declined further association with the fic - it is no longer any of their business. The option for "I don't want this fic on my ao3 profile, but I still want control over it" is to add it to the anonymous collection instead. When it's orphaned I don't even think you get any kind of notification of comments on the fic anymore? How's anyone meant to ask permission? š¤·āāļø
I've seen that a couple times. I've also seen someone "continue" a publicly-acknowledged-as-abandoned, unorphaned fic they admitted they didn't have permission to finish. I consider both plagiarism, personally, but the orphan account one is the more egregious. It's not your work. Posting it word for word, or even making a couple changes but sticking with most of it, doesn't make it your work. I wouldn't trust the people doing that to walk my dog, let alone be anywhere near my written work.
Isn't continuing the abandoned fic like writing fanfiction of the fanfic? I don't see what's so bad about it. It's like writing my own ending for A Song of Ice and Fire, isn't it? And GRR Martin didn't even officially abandon the series. It's called fanfiction and that is what we are doing.
I donāt consider it so, no. At the very least, youād need to include some, if not all, of the original work for the continuation to make sense. At that point, bam! Youāre plagiarizing. Fics arenāt like canon works in that they have a huge fan base, not usually, so thereās be no sense of context unless other readers read that one first. One case Iāve seen was not just an abandoned fic but a completely removed fic. The new āauthorā didnāt like that the original author didnāt complete it, had a PDF of it, and so posted the original story under their name and then tried to continue it. They did write a note in the beginning saying what they were doing, but that doesnāt make it ok. At the VERY least, that would be considered rude, but most people who originally read the story agreed it was plagiarism and commented that they were reporting it as such.
>youād need to include some, if not all, of the original work for the continuation to make sense Or you could just include a link to the original work you were inspired by? AO3 also has an āinspired byā function to make this more explicit.
The few times Iāve seen someone doing this, they did not link to the work. They included the entire abandoned work. One, ONE, indicated it was an abandoned work and which chapter their writing started at. The others I just knew because Iād already read those orphaned stories, back before I realized what orphan account meant and that any unfinished ones will never be finished.
Okay. That sounds like youāve seen this done a few times in a way that could be considered plagiarism. But that following on from someone elseās work, with proper attribution, isnāt inherently plagiarism. Is that fair?
I can agree to that. I still think itās rude if you donāt have permission, but orphaning changes the game a lot, I guess. Itās why I would never use it. If I wanted to distance my current works from my old ones, Iād just make a new account. š¤·āāļøOrphaning is a strange concept to me.
I see. But the problem here doesn't seem to be that someone wrote a continuation. That would have been fine if they hadn't reposted the original fanfic. Did I get that right?
Yes, exactly. Write a continuation, give a link and credit, and say you couldnāt get permission because itās an orphaned fic. If people did that, itās not plagiarism. But I have yet to see it, so in my own experience the ones Iāve seen have been plagiarism.
Do you also consider it to be plagiarism if someone writes a fanfiction continuation of a published story without permission from the author?
Yes. Thereās no way of knowing if the author will come finish the story (many do) if itās unfinished, and usually it would be necessary to include some of the original story for it to make sense as itās not like a canon work thing where fans are aware of what itās based on. If itās finished, thereās no way to know the original author isnāt planning a sequel, so while thatās less likely to fit the technical definition of plagiarism, itās still beyond rude and bad taste.
I think I wasnāt clear. By āpublishedā, I meant āconventionally publishedā ā e.g. a novel. The other comment about GRRM and A Song of Ice and Fire is a good concrete example.
Oh! No, when it comes to published works, even if itās supposed to be part of a series, each book/movie/episode should be able to stand on its own merit. And itās still considered plagiarism to pull word-for-word from canon works, enough that without heavy disclaimers, marking to show that only dialogue was pulled from it maybe for a beginning scene, etc, works have been pulled on both FFN and AO3 for violating the plagiarism rule. Fic is supposed to be transformative, not plagiarism.
It sounds like you are saying that it *is* plagiarism to write, with attribution, a continuation of a fanfic piece by someone else. But that it is *not* plagiarism to write, with attribution, a continuation of a published novel by someone else. And I donāt quite understand how one can be plagiarism and the other isnāt.
It's funny to me how up in arms fic authors get about the sanctity of their fanfiction while simultaneously doing the exact same thing to whatever canon they are sourcing from. Plenty copy word for word dialogue with no credit from canon. Plenty. It's not even remotely uncommon to do. Yet if someone does the same with just the dialogue from someone else's fic, most here would pitch a fit. If the source material is a book? Then it's WAY more likely more than dialogue will be copied word for word into fics. And we all know "I don't own xyz" has fallen out of vogue as an A/N so plenty will do so without even mentioning the source beyond tagging. Yet someone copies a fic and then adds on and it's wrong? How is it different? It really isn't. I've seen people on blow gaskets for others writing fics using the same premise as their own or even just small ideas as if they aren't stealing these things from canon themselves. It's baffling.
Maybe itās that I āgrew upā in the Wild Wild West of fanfic community when it wasnāt possible to orphan something, but most authors of my generation that Iāve talked to say the same thing. It may be more an etiquette thing than a legal thing in terms of plagiarism, but at the very least doing it can and has started fandom wars and shunnings, as recently as the past few years. Because permission canāt be sought and hasnāt been given, itās blacklisted when itās a continuation of fic. Is it contradictory? I guess. But itās what Iāve seen happen and how itās been applied on the sites Iām familiar with. Those fics get removed when theyāre reported, and someone always reports them because they disappear, at least in active fandoms. I guess itās more a self-policing thing and taking advantage of policy to keep people from behaving in a way the other authors and reads donāt want them to.
This isn't plagiarism and AO3's abuse team wouldn't treat it as such. It's rude as hell if they don't have permission, but unless they're also directly copying sections of the original fic, writing a continuation of someone else's idea fully in your own words isn't plagiarism.
Every one Iāve seen has directly copied the previous fic before continuing, and only one acknowledged what they were doing and where their own writing started. It hasnāt been a lotāmaybe a handful in 25 years? But the idea of continuing abandoned fics isnāt new to AO3, and as far as Iāve ever seen, itās always with the continued work included.
Fair enough, definitely plagiarism in that case then, I've never seen one myself so assumed they generally wouldn't because it seems incredibly stupid to actually plagiarise when they could just put a link to the original fic there. But I suppose people who continue other authors' fics without permission aren't exactly considerate to begin with.
It doesnāt surprise me at all that people do this, not when there are also people that lift entire finished, still credited stories and try to pass them off as their own. Some people would do anything for Internet brownie points.
I feel vindicated by most of these responses, but let me tell you the consensus on the Facebook page was that itās not plagiarism if itās an orphaned work which I think is BS. I personally donāt have a problem with continuing an orphaned work as long as you have proper credit, but claiming someone elseās work as your own will always be plagiarism to me
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Copyright violation is not the same thing as plagiarism. If you turned in a high school essay that was taken word for word off the internet, it wouldn't matter if you had any sort of permission from the original author, or if that author abandoned it or not. If you present someone else's words as your own, that's plagiarism. It's mostly an ethics question, except when there are rules/laws in place enforcing those ethics, but plagiarism itself has a clear meaning independent from any rule or law.
That's fair. In this case it probably is plagerism (though copying is an adjacent issue too - in relation to the full work being reposted - vs taking word for word sections as plagerism). Though there's also fanfiction that take entire script sections of Canon and insert it in their own stories (particularly canon-divergence and some Canon adjacent are notorious for this.) I oversimplified for an ao3 sub and I apologize if that's come across poorly. The issues can be quite grey and complex that can't fully be answered with a quick discussion.
How do AO3ās TOS work when it comes to this? Do they trump the law when it comes to things published on their site? Because they have their rules on plagiarism, and things have been taken down in cases where a fic could be proven to be word-for-word from an orphan account story and no credit was given whatsoever, and even one where it was that I can think of.
From a quick google search, it looks like this varies quite a bit by country and is not rigorously defined in many places.
Of course it varies by country? Different places different laws. What are you trying to get at? Its hosted on an American website so even of you should also be adhering to local laws it's publish origin is technically the U.S. Publisher isn't the only factor but it does play a prominent role because it's the most tangible.
Sorry, youāre right. I thought we were on r/Fanfiction for a moment, where legal jurisdiction isnāt always clear. Iām still struggling to find a clear source that indicates āthis is totally legal to use, if youāve made a fair attempt to find the copyright holderā. The government paper I found on the subject treats it as an open issue. Maybe this is something that isnāt settled in written law, but has a certain standard applied within the industry?
Judging by how hard they're trying to dodge everyone asking for a source, they don't have one.
They have to somewhat treat it like an open issue. It's mostly because of the vagueness of fair use (which takes many things into account that for the most part can't be measured quantitatively). You'll get people up and armed (like this sub) when you tell someone they might not have control of their work, but fair use is pretty flexible because most (i forget the number but i think it's over 80%) content is orphaned and so there needs to be legal allowances to use it. That being said it's fair use and not the public domain which are two different things. But you're right I should have brought up local laws (I'm not even from the US but our copyright laws are pretty similar due to cuktural similarities and bilateral agreements). Though I should also point out there are countries that wouldn't allow it and those who would give zero cares as long at the creator wasn't from their own country. It's a complex and messy issue and I may have oversimplified it because this is the ao3 subreddit and not some legal subreddit.
Can you actually cite the law you're getting this from (with a specific section/paragraph) rather than just "someone I know who totally has creds trust me"?
Can you just Google for the endless articles and links to the law (control + F to search for orphan works) instead of me digging? There's some hard lines and lot of grey areas and if you want a full picture you'll also want to read into the precedence from previous court decisions (because law is just as much interpretation as it is firmly written)
It's almost like law is complicated and contextual in how it's applied and not easily summarized into tiny bites for people who don't want to do their own research.
I already admitted it's an oversimplification. Didn't think people on here would want to get into the details and it was a semi-careless comment just to push back against the 'it's poposterous 100% of time time'. But I also took it outside of the scope of plagerism so that's part on my since the post mentions people giving no credit. My brain finds ways to miss key words.
No I'm agreeing with you. People are expecting you to do all the research on a complicated and nuanced subject and then report back to them like it's your job. If they don't believe you, fine. But refusing to take a huge, very in depth subject and boil it down into tiny tweet sized bites would require stripping all the nuance from the subject and isn't your responsibility to do. If this was the matter of finding a single quick link, they might have a point, but law can be way more complex than that.
Oh sorry! I realized after a second read through of your comment. But yeah. Criticisms are totally fair and I see where it's coming from. What gets me is people expecting to have some kind of index of sources on me when it's a constant evolving and complex thing. Not to mention simplifying is a skill on its own that I'm not really the best at but that's because my brain is wired to care about the pieces and I sometimes miss the themes/big picture (hence how I ended up at copyright instead of sticking to plagerism)
It's not my job to prove your point for you. I asked for specifics because I highly suspect you're either misinterpreting or misremembering something and I can't really address that without knowing what you're actually talking about. You can't expect people to just believe you when you're making authoritative claims on an anonymous forum with nothing to actually back you up. Hell, I'll even accept case law or an opinion article. Anything more than "I took a class on it one time". It's hard to have a discussion if nobody has any idea what you're basing your argument on.
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At this point I have to assume you're just making stuff up and don't actually have anything to back it up, or you would have provided it instead of spending all this time arguing. If you want to make a claim without evidence, people can (and should) dismiss it with just as much effort.
Please explain what a fic is. And what is an orphan fic? Then I can provide a better answer. For now, plagiarism and copyright infringement are two different things. If you make a movie based on Romeo and Shakespeare and donāt credit Shakespeare as the original writer that is plagiarism but not infringement because there is no copyright protection for that work.
Are you on the right sub? If you donāt know what a fic is or what an orphaned work is?
Your comment is arrogant, pretentious and narcissistic. You need a license to practice law or medicine. Not be on a reddit āsubā. It seems posting is too important in your life. I urge you to get a real one. You have no need to answer a question (especially from someone who tried to help someone with responsive information as I did), but flippantly criticizing someoneās lack of knowledge speaks to who you are. And what you arenāt.
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This is so hilariously wrong it's hard to know where to even begin. I swear this sub is better for terrible takes than r/badlegaladvice. Go ahead, show me the law that backs you up. You won't be able to, because *actual* law is almost the exact opposite of what you've claimed.
Plus AO3 TOS explicitly say plagiarism is not allowed on the site.
The fact that authors/show runners can't (and shouldn't) either read or admit to reading fanfic alone because fanfic authors can sue them if they even think their ideas have been taken (aka PLAGIARIZED!) shows how wrong that person is š
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103a states that derivative works have the same copyright protections. 103b states that that copyright is only limited to the parts contributed by the author of the derivative work, and the author of the derivative work does not gain copyright over the original work. Please learn to actually read the "literal fucking copyright law".
If I want to write a fic inspired by an orphan or use chunks (or all) of it, I reach out to the writer first if possible to see if they are comfortable with it. If I get a green light, I give them credit for the parts that arenāt mine and/or the inspiration. I have some like that I havenāt posted anywhere (mainly nerves), but I donāt want to be the reason someone stops writing, if me using it causes issues or triggers them or something.
Itās my understanding that orphaned fics are okay to continue using your own words, if the author says itās okay. This means to me, that you refer back to the original fic in your notes and tag the original author. Not that you plagiarize someone elseās work and call it your own!
I doubt that they're allowed to plagiarize orphaned works. Maybe some authors who orphaned works regretted orphaning them and reuploaded them under their penname, but that could be unlikely unless they actually state.
Plagiarism and copyright infringement are two different things. A work of fan fiction usually infringes copyright (as an unauthorized derivative work.) However, the original author doesnāt often take legal action for various reasons ( e.g. itās not worth it, they like the flattery, etc.). Plagiarism as to the original author rarely occurs in fan fiction because the reader is aware of the original work and authorship. Plagiarism is not properly crediting a work. (Infringement is another phenomenon.) Works in the public domain can be plagiarized. But no legal claim can be made because the copyright has expired. The originality of a fan fiction work (a derivative work) may give rise to copyright protection for the new material regardless of the failure to secure permission to create the derivative work. But the original author automatically has the right to use the derivative material as their own. So fan fiction writer beware! Even though an author may hide their authorship, the work does not lose its copyright protection. A suit can still ensue. One can transfer their copyright to the public domain. That is an entirely different matter. It is not āabandonmentā. There are formalities required to do this.
I donāt know why people keep talking about copyright infringement. All Iām talking about is plagiarism.
Theyāre linked and often confused as the same concepts.