Subject: Re: Mushy stuff... 
Distribution: world
Organization: Keristor Systems
X-Mailer: Simple NEWS 1.90 (ka9q DIS 1.19)
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1992 16:13:59 +0000

In article <BztBwH.7Dq@eis.calstate.edu> shagstr@eis.calstate.edu writes:

>    I find it very amusing to think that people running PernMush would
>be afraid of being sued over certain OOC/differant/or not mentioned in the
>books or otherwise non-conon (In their opinion) things...

The OOC/non-canon things are in general a MU* internal argument - no-one
is going to sue over it (unless the players get really pissed off, and I
doubt that most of them have the money).

>   Why in blazes would Anne McCaffrey or her lawyers waste time and money
>to sue a bunch of college students for an online roleplaying game?  Noone
>is making any money on it.  It advertises and sells her books with no effort
>from her.   Grow up people.  I'm sure A.M. has better things to do than
>worry about a game that a bunch of people with little or no lives play.

I was going to post this anyway, but this is a good leadin.  This isn't
Anne McCaffrey - YET - but it's relevant to all people role-playing on
the net.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Excerpted from a letter from Mercedes Lackey about her universe:

    "First of all, you may not be aware of it, but I am rare in
permitting people to write fanfic based on my work.  Many authors and
agents feel it confuses copyrights enough that they do not permit it at
all.  For an example, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro and her agent are so
adamantly against it that they have SUED (yes, with lawyers and court
costs and all the rest) both a publisher of fanfic and a filk publisher
for publishing works using her characters when permission had been
explicitly denied.  The writer and publisher have been REQUIRED by the
result of the suit to place apologies in several mundane publications
such as Publisher's Weekly.  I don't know if any of you are aware how
much such an advertisement costs; suffice it to say that is somewhere in
the area of a thousand dollars.  And that is only one of the magazines
where this publisher has been required to place such an ad.

    "Having established that I am a Good Guy for letting you play in my
sandbox ... let me continue.  Some folks have been horribly incences
because I asked, politely, that you not post Valdemar fanfic over in
Prodigy...  This was to protect YOU.  If my agent or my publisher
decided that this fanfic was in violation of my copyrights, they could
very easily sue YOU, your parents if you are a minor, your school if you
are using a school machine...at the very least you would be required ,
after paying several thousand dollars in legal costs, to pay several
more thousand dollars in apology-ads in major booksellers publications,
just like that fanzine publisher.  I doubt many of you have that kind of
money to throw away; I certainly don't.  And I am afraid that there
would be nothing I could do to call off my agent; in areas where my
rights -- and HIS future income -- are concerned, HE has every right to
vogorously protect those rights...

    "It becomes more confused because Prodigy is an electronic service
and this laps over into the area of "electronic rights" about which
there is a great deal of confusion.  Because of the confusion, my agent
prefers to err in the direction of being conservative and protectionist.
This also goes for "MUCK"s or "MUSH"s.  He is flatly NOT PERMITTING any
electronic role-playing of any kind, whether it is on a not-for-profit
or for-profit service...  If he finds out about it, and he eventually
will, you will find a "cease and desist" letter from the agency's legal
department -- and so will the net you are on.  The Sysops will not be
happy with you about this.  If you continue, you will probably be
slapped with a lawsuit.  If you are a minor, you will probably see your
college fund go down the drain.  If you are not, paying the out-of-court
legal costs alone will set you back several thousand dollars.  This is
something I have no power over; we are not only talking about MY income,
we are talking about my AGENT's income, and he is not going to tolerate
anyone cutting into it.  With the advent of the Electronic Arts books,
we now have a real possibility of commercial computer games; start
talking about a Nintendo version, and you really run into large money.
My agent cannot afford to let one person get in the way of that.

    "To add to the confusion, the "Bookman" is looking more and more
likely all the time.  So books are no longer being thought of as
published in the traditional format.  Now here is where it cuts REAL
near the bone for me.  If you, in all innocence, messed up my electronic
rights, I could be completely shut out of the books-on-disk market for
all current series.  And ten, twenty or thirty years down the road, when
all books are coming out on disk, you will not only have ruined my
income, you will have prevented others from experiencing the same
pleasure you had in discovering my work...  Many comanies are already
writing electronic publication INTO THEIR CONTRACTS even though they
aren't doing it yet.  This represents MAJOR money to my agency, and the
DO take it seriously and they WILL take legal action to prevent it.

    "...  because of something that happened to Marion Zimmer Bradley,
it is MUCH more likely to happen now...  The result?  Betsy Wollheim of
DAW books has said that under the circumstances she cannot publish the
book Marion had already begun.  Marion has begun requiring release forms
for all Friends of Darkover anthologies, and is returning unread all
fanfiction.  She may even end the Darkover anthologies altogether.

    "This piece may be downloaded or photocopied and posted to any other
systems you choose, with my permission."

Mercedes Lackey.

(Any typos are mine! - CC)

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Back to me again.  DON'T give me any of this crap about "She wouldn't
really set lawyers on to people" - look at what other authors' agents
and publishers have done.  No, Anne would be very upset if someone got
raked over the coals, but (a) she couldn't do anything, and (b) she has
to think about the future.

In regard to 'deviations' from the books, Anne has authorised certain
deviations in the interest if the fans.  Among them are that women can
Impress the colored dragons (not the bronze), and a tacit acceptance of
10th Pass Weyrs.  In some things she has said "No" - among them the
existence of 'other' colored dragons (red, black, purple, whatever).
There are good reasons for this.

If the fanfiction (and this includes role-playing on MU*) goes too far
away from the books WHILE CALLING ITSELF PERN it can bring the whole
series into disrepute, especially for beginners.  For instance, in
Britain a TV programme about Anne was advertised as "creator of the
Dragonriders of Porn".  It was a genuine typo (apparently), and as far
as I know no action was taken against the company, but I *do* know of
several people who rejected the whole series of books, and other books
by the author, because of that one error.  Given that the net is
worldwide, anything that could cause several thousand potential readers
to not buy is big money.

Personally, I have no interest in whether any person gets sued as a
result of what they do in violation of the law - "think of it as
evolution in action".  But personally I *do* have an interest if they
mess things up for *me* - I write Pern fanfiction as part of the Ista
Weyr fangroup, and if *I* am banned from writing or playing in the Pern
universe because of the actions of some thoughtless idiot, *I* am going
to be upset.

Chris, a.k.a. Keris @ Ista Weyr 9th Pass (offline)

***********************************************************************
*  chris@keris.demon.co.uk      *                                     *
*  chriscr@cix.compulink.co.uk  *  FIAWOL (Filking Is A Way Of Life)  *
*  100014.3217@compuserve.com   *                                     *
***********************************************************************
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