Who has the right to tell a story?
There are multiple ways to answer that question. Let’s start with the simplest. If you want to create a story, go ahead. You have every right to make up whatever tale you want, without any qualifications or special permissions. No one should stop you from engaging in your personal creativity.
Now what if you want to promote it on some kind of platform, and/or charge money for it? Ah, now that’s where things get stickier. There are both legal and practical ramifications that come into play. You are not entitled to an unlimited platform. If a publisher isn’t interested in your story, they have no obligation to publish it. Some have looked this refusal to publish and mistakenly called it censorship. That is false, and an altogether glib understanding of the actual oppressive practices of authoritarian government. No one is knocking down doors, confiscating copies of your book and burning them. No one is being imprisoned for daring to read your story. It’s not censorship; it’s just rejection. And of course rejection stinks. I know that all too well. But it’s a far cry from having your book actively suppressed by the authorities.
So you’re free to write your story; everyone else is free to read it…or not. Go ahead and self-publish if you can’t find a platform with traditional publishing. The Internet itself can be a very convenient platform, if you can find your audience. As long as it’s an original work, free from plagiarism, or characters and/or settings that belong to someone else. Aha. This is where copyright comes into play.
Another common misconception is that copyright must be registered in order to exist. In fact, the moment you create something, it’s automatically copyrighted. Registering that copyright is a legal formality that simplifies the process of proving something is your original work, but as far as technicalities are concerned, it’s already legally yours. Few things will set off literary agent’s warning bells faster than a line in the query letter that claims, “I have copyrighted my book.” First off, there is an implicit notion that the writer is paranoid that someone will steal their novel, which…doesn’t reflect well on their opinion of the agent. More importantly, they’re revealing a lack of understanding as far as copyright laws are concerned. If the writer gets a contract with a publisher, the copyright will be taken care of, but it’s really not necessary to fret about it beforehand. Sorry to deflate your ego, but novels are rarely purloined and illicitly published from an agent’s slush pile. Not even yours.
Copyright is a curious thing, though. Where does fan fiction come into play? The legal issues can be thorny. Some writers are fiercely opposed to any fan works derived from their stories, and hunt down any and all with a vengeance. Others are far more supportive — as long as the fans aren’t making money from it. Seems quite reasonable to me. If you’ve created a well-loved, engaging world, and someone else pops up and starts raking in tons of money with fan works set in that world, without giving any financial credit to you, it’s rather like stealing.
But where do you draw the line? There was quite a hubbub some years back when a Harry Potter fan decided to publish his vast encyclopedia of the wizarding world, previously available for free online, and JK Rowling took him to court. She had admired the work, even used it herself, but now that he was looking to make money off of it, she felt he had crossed a line. Who was right? It was a tremendously sticky mess. There’s the Internet, making things complicated.
We’ve also seen fan writers gain enough popularity with their alternate universe renderings of existing stories that they went ahead and re-purposed their fan fiction as original novels. If the scenarios are altered enough to bear little resemblance to the works that initially inspired them, and if they’ve already garnered a considerable fanbase, it can be a surprisingly effective way to launch a writing career. And of course, anything in the public domain is free from copyright issues, so go ahead and sell your steampunk Pride and Prejudice re-telling. Jane Austen’s not going to sue you.
Sometimes, though, art remains under copyright long after its creator is gone. Copyright laws are….a little bit insane. They can be a useful way to respect the wishes of a writer and keep the rights to the work within the family, such as how Christopher Tolkien continued to edit and compile his father’s work after his passing (and prevented anyone from making a film version of the Silmarillion, thank goodness). But they can also be a way of giving rights to corporations rather than individuals. And corporations, the prototypical faceless entities, tend to be downright draconian in their enforcement of copyright. Disney tends to be one of the worst offenders, undergoing all sorts of legal gymnastics to maintain their legal rights of very old properties. No one at the company now had anything to do with the films of the 1930s and 40s, but they’re still making plenty of money from merchandising and what-have-you.
It sounds like I’m putting Disney on the same level as their most despicable villains, but really they’re just an easy example of how messy the copyright issue can be. I’ve been pontificating on their properties in particular because of how many they’ve recently acquired, including Marvel Studios, Fox, and — the one that really gets my goat — Lucasfilm. Partly I’m irritated by how much money they’re making off of someone else’s work, but it goes deeper than that.
Copyright is not equivalent to authorship. What gives someone the right to tell a story? The legal right to disseminate and monetize that story is not what I’m talking about. It’s something more nebulous, and everyone’s personal opinion will vary. Everyone has their own notion of what is part of the “canon.” For the average movie-goer, I suppose they don’t overthink it too much. They see a new Star Wars film is coming out; they go and watch it. They might like it; they might not like it. But they don’t worry themselves over canonicity. As for me? Oh boy, do I ever.
George Lucas created Star Wars. He collaborated with a lot of other people, but he wrote the stories, he worked with the screenwriters and the directors and the editors to tell his story. The idea of Star Wars without Lucas seems a ridiculous contradiction to me. What right does anyone else have to create a Star Wars film, with no collaborative process from Lucas? It’s nothing. Copyright is irrelevant. It’s a fan film. It’s all the more egregious when you hire two directors whose intentions are completely at odds with each other, who seem bent on undoing whatever the previous one had done. Why in the world would I place that mess in the same category as movies with an actual coherent vision throughout?
When I express this viewpoint to the average movie-goer, they smirk and roll their eyes at my zealotry. Why do I bother splitting hairs over this? I don’t feel the same about most other movie franchises. That’s generally because the creative process is diffused in a less concentrated fashion amongst many collaborators, and you can’t really pinpoint one single person’s vision as the driving force. It’s different with Star Wars. Of course, I’m admittedly far more passionate about these films than any other. I’m also very passionate about honoring an artist’s vision, even if you don’t agree with all their choices. I fear that Disney too often takes the approach of “how much money can we make from this property” rather than, “what are the daring, innovative storytelling choices that made this property so successful to begin with?” Trying to squeeze every last drop of profit from a franchise is the surest way to artistic bankruptcy.
Who has the right to tell a story? Anyone. Who has the right to make money from a story? The copyright holder. Who has the right to tell a story that fans will embrace? That’s the one that has no simple answer. But it’s certainly an interesting question to explore.
cynthiaailshie 