Anyone realize Fanfiction is illegal?

[Paradigm Shifter]

Akamatsu Ken (from what I have heard) draws hentai doujin of his own work - Love Hina. It's not considered canon.

I would work on the idea that if the author specifically stated it was fanfiction (let's face it, they wouldn't have to advertise the fact that they were the author) then it would not count as canon.

And yes, I meant more in the publisher suing the author, on behalf of the author... :lol: or an animation studio suing someone who is writing fanfiction, when they were one of the people working on the storyline, or something...

 

[Drawde]

On the doujin front, I thought they were 'legal' (for a given value of the word) or at least politely ignored, as long as the author didn't make a profit. You could sell them, but you had to lose money each time one was sold. So basically you could pay for paper/printing costs, but you could never get paid for time and effort involved. Last time I checked up on that was a while ago, though, so it might well have changed by now.

An interesting quandry, however, would be an author that writes fanfic or doujin of their own work...

A doujin is simply a self-published manga. Nothing illegal about that. Haibane Renmei started out as a doujin, by a popular author/animator. It was seen by someone who knew him, who was in charge of some of the things he animated, and asked him to complete and animate the series. The creator of Tenchi Muyo made some doujin of it, and they're considered canon, though he avoided answering some questions in them. It's when the doujin in question is based on someone elses work, not your own or original, that it can be a problem. As mentioned, then it's technically illeagle, but usually ignored if you're not making a profit from it. It's one of the ways they scout out potential artists. Only if they're trying to make a profit, or if it's strongly against the image of the series (Nintendo goes after Pokemon porn) do they press charges.

 

[grant]

Several of the more well known mangaka started out with doujin, such as
Rikdo Koshi - excel saga
Ken Akamatsu - love hina, negima, and he still does under a pen name
Clamp - do I really have to list their work?

edit
interesting link popopo

 

[toraneko]

Akamatsu Ken (from what I have heard) draws hentai doujin of his own work - Love Hina.

From what I've seen, that's incorrect. The artist who draws those doujin (Magi is his pen name) was an assistant to Akamatsu in his studio. He did the inks for various Akamatsu works, so his style became phenomenally similar.

Akamatsu looked the other way, much like nearly every mangaka out there does. It actually helps the manga industry somewhat to have pools of talented doujin artists around - studios need extra help very often.

Magi's doujin are published by the Culittle doujin circle.

 

[Paradigm Shifter]

toraneko - thanks for the correction. That was why I said what I did, I did not know for sure.

 

[toraneko]

I am here to enlighten.

 

[Lumias]

PS - word to the wise: don't ever write a story in one of Orson Scott Card's worlds.

That dude will mess you up O_O

Hmm, glad I never wrote any fanfiction for it then, but do you know where it was said that he is against fanfiction?

 

[The Eromancer]

ahh but in the end the authors don't really mind all that much. Fanfiction helps to keep the hype up on whatever is popular at the time, thus giving them free advertisement.

so its a win/win situation. Fans get what they want and so do the authors.

 

[Shiro]

Edited due to the fact there is no delete button ._.!

 

[Mageohki]

You might also be interested in Fan Fiction, Fandom and Fanfare (PDF), a gentle introduction to the topic from the Boston University Journal of Science and Law. It's worth reading.

Copyright law varies reasonably widely, though, so most of it won't apply outside the US. There is no such thing as "fair use" here in Australia, for example. Know your local laws!

@MageOhki: can you provide some citations for that? Doujinshi authors have been sued for copyright infringement both by publishers and by individual manga authors, so I would suggest that it's just as "technically" (i.e., actually) illegal in Japan as elsewhere.

While you're right some creators of Dojin have been sued, it's after they've done very -explict- things that the authors DID NOT WANT DONE, and publically stated.
(One I recall was a Sasami hentai, another a Ranma pregant) (Or as noted, Nindento and porn of certain series)
That's the exception to the rule, though.
There's also a bit of history to the Ranma pregant one, that I'm not quite going to go into, except let's just say, when you piss off a major corp in Japan, expect pain.
(and no, it wasn't the dojin itself)

However, if you'd note Every. SINGLE. Current or recent manga-ke, CAME from Comiket.

It's more a nature "unless explictly forbidden, it's allowed" (oddly enough in Japanese custom law, where the usual view is "if not explictly allowed, forbidden")


ALSO... the OTHER cases... (where it has happened.) Two were pre berne, and invovling non 'Japanese' (in the sense the work wasn't created in Japan) (so they were sued under IIRC Mexian law)

It all boils down to factors, in japanese law. Japanese get squrriely on issues of artistic venue, though, so explaining it, isn't EASY.

(and given my law courses are US law, with major eyes towards Military and INternational law, I'm quite likey behind the times on Japanese law.)
A.

Sorry for not getting back sooner.