Copyright
From The New Media Embed Program Fall08
Copyright shows a person's legal ownership over an idea or creation. While it is always important, it is even more important in regards to New Media and the internet. With music sampling that occurs with music, photo sharing, fanfictions, and online art, copyright becomes a very touchy subject in a world where there are not yet any set rules of regulation.
Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a license for users to copyright their work under a public domain.
Attribution: You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work — and derivative works based upon it — but only if they give credit the way you request.
Noncommercial: You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your work — and derivative works based upon it — but for noncommercial purposes only.
No Derivative Works: You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform only verbatim copies of your work, not derivative works based upon it.
Share Alike: You allow others to distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs your work.
Fanfiction
Although fanfiction is not covered by a Creative Commons license, they still do hold some sort of copyright within the domain of written works. According to the Terms of Service on fanfiction.net, you cannot copy the idea or storyline of any written fanfiction work. It is protected in the same way any written work would be copied.
Also, fanfiction is not infringing upon the copyright of the original work of which the fanfiction is based on. It is considered to be a "derivative work" and is therefore like a critique of the original work.
Even though these licenses are underlying concepts when thinking of fanfiction, a derivative work is not technically protected by official copyright law. According to the Organization of Transformative Works:
"OTW was created to work toward a future in which all fannish works are recognized as legal and transformative, and accepted as legitimate creative activity.
Our mission is to be proactive and innovative in protecting and defending our work from commercial exploitation and legal challenge, and to preserve our fannish economy, values, and way of life by protecting and nurturing our fellow fans, our work, our commentary, our history, and our identity, while providing the broadest possible access to fannish activity for all fans."
