Guest #1 June 1, 2007 Bad idea, bad approach. Seems a couple of suits from Yahoo! thought they'd create a collective fan-fiction website and everyone would flock to it and they'd make a big bag o' money. Well, they thought wrong. They've managed to really infuriate the people they want to exploit: ---------------------------------------------- "(2) FanLib is seeking to make money off other people’s intellectual property, using fans to do it. While I don’t believe fanfiction is illegal as long as it is nonprofit, the situation is different if FanLib is profiting off the intellectual property, of, say, Lucasfilm (and judging by past incidents, I’m kind of shocked Lucas hasn’t sicced lawyers on FanLib yet). NOT ONLY THAT, but FanLib’s TOS attempts to place all legal liability for FanLib profiting off IP they don’t own ON THE FANS. Who are not profiting. My guess is that FanLib, knowing that the average fan doesn’t have much money, is going to rely on the liability being the fan’s (rather than the corporation’s) to keep the IP owners sending C&D letters to the fans rather than suing FanLib. And I’m disturbed that FanLib’s reassurance to fans consists of “the worst that’s likely to happen is that you’ll get a C&D.” C&Ds are pretty scary things to the average fan, and they mean either going to court and spending money (which no one’s yet done) or ceasing to share writing that may represent years of work. They ARE a big deal, socially–how would you react to a C&D that meant you had to stop playing tennis forever, or couldn’t make quilts or whatever?" Read about it here. mh ."The mouse does not know life until it is in the mouth of the cat." Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
