• Member Since 4th Jan, 2015
  • offline last seen 12 hours ago

Damaged


Pithy Statement

More Blog Posts584

Jun
13th
2018

Licensing · 6:28am Jun 13th, 2018

Oof. Hardcore topic alert! Well, maybe not.

I have noticed a complete and utter lack of licensing on the site, so figured I'd just go ahead and give everyone a heads-up.

All my work is released as is, under a Creative Commons Attribution + NonCommercial + ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.

Of course I extend a Creative Commons, Attribution + NoDerivatives (BY-ND) license of my work to Fimfiction.net itself.

And finally a statement about my works. I have no intent to infringe on Hasbro's copyrights at all, and am confident that my works are transformative, and don't make any of Hasbro's own content available for use without their consent. Like the wonderful people at Hasbro, I just want to make lovely stories that help sell their toys.

—Damaged

Updated to allow derivative works—note, while I allow derivatives, they must be licensed under the same license I used, which means you cannot make money from them.

Report Damaged · 4,207 views · #Copyright
Comments ( 10 )

Possibly I should just Google this, but: what's the difference between "derivatives" and "transformative works"?

5267823 Transformative works are permitted by Fair Use—derivatives are not.

A transformative work would be, say, posting some small sections of the story (with attribution) for the purposes of making a review or critique.

Derivative would be writing a sequel to one of my stories or making a reading of one on youtube.

5267838
Couldn't a number of your works be called "sequels" to events in the show; and/or to fan art?

(Sorry to bug you. To be clear, I have no particular plans for derivations or transformations of your work regardless.)

5267855 When you change the format AND change the story, it changes things from derivative to transformative. If you are seeking legal answers to these things, however, you might want to contact a lawyer.

Isn't all fanfiction licensed like that by default? I mean, you can't exactly copyright it anyway.

5630103 You can copyright it. Whether or not you broke copyright (fair use is for courts to decide, but Hasbro have not been pursuing copyright action against authors) is irrelevant to that.

By default, you (the reader) only have the right to view the piece and, through the fimfic interface, download it for private use. I like my stuff being free, so wanted to give people more rights than that. For all I care, you can edit my work to change the name of a character and re-post it—but you must include this copyright notice and you must attribute it to me and state it's a derivative work of one of mine.

You do realize that this entire site exists because Hasbro doesn't care enough to shut it down, right? They just don't because it's not worth their time.

Just because they haven't pursued action against authors doesn't mean they can't. And I don't see how many of us could win that fight, with all the costs that go with court action.

5630272 See the reply just above yours.

No, I would not defend any of my work in court because I can't afford to. Hasbro won't sue anyone over this unless things reflect bad on them.

The big ways to get their attention in this regard are:
Cash-in on their name
Causing harm to their name

That's basically it. Those are the reasons that Hasbro has ever sought legal action against anyone in the brony fandom.

Would I put my money behind that? Hell no. Hasbro have more and trying to fight a lawsuit in whatever state in the US they seem is right would be impossible for me—a disabled pensioner in Australia.

At the end of the day, this license is more about what I want to encourage and give permission to do rather than what I want to restrict. Can I afford to enforce if someone breaks this? Not at all. Can I show I am fine with people writing in any of the AUs I have created? Absolutely.

Why do you think we need this kind of thing?

5768078 Because it helps people understand that yes, I am perfectly fine with them writing derivative works but no, I am not okay with people selling my stories for their own gains.

Login or register to comment