The Legality of Commissioning Fan Fic

anonusr — Sun, 12 Jan 2014 00:02:19 GMT

A friend of mine once said that the reason fanfiction is largely ignored by the authors of original works (and their lawyers) is because of a basic copyright principle. You generally don't get sued if you:

Don't make money off of someone else's copyright

Don't do anything that blocks the copyright owner from making money on their copyright

So, here's my question - what about commissioned fic? Groups like the Organization for Transformative Works (the group that runs A03) argue that fanfiction is completely legal because it is classified as a transformative work (under United States copyright law), and therefore does not infringe on the copyright of the original author - so, in theory, you should be able to sell your fic. However, to the best of my knowledge, there haven't been any major legal cases that have tested this theory.

Since I have a few fic authors on my friend list, I wanted to ask - what do you think? Do you accept commissions? If so, is this something that concerns you?

Well, I graduated earlier this year

anonusr — Tue, 08 Oct 2013 03:16:02 GMT

Time to update the profile, I suppose.

Also, I have an avatar now!

Because I wanted to change things up a bit...

anonusr — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 06:56:13 GMT

I've updated by bio. That is all.