I am quite curious over this.
The biggest reason, I often hear from users or mods is 'it is copyright and therefor bad for the site'
But following that logic, fanfiction itself is bad for the site, since characters from the show are under ownership of Hasbro and therefor any fanfic that uses canon-characters are breaching copyright on a daily-basis.

I am just curious as to what kind of copyright-breaches this site approves and supports and what kind of breach it condeems and scorns, because to me, it seems fairly hypocritical to delete stories and ban users for copyright-reasons on a site that survives on breaking copyright laws in itself.
And yes, many writers do tolerate and allow fanfiction to exist, but that does not change the fact that fanfiction itself is breaking copyright laws.

6453568
Which is funny as there's one Nyx story, though it could have been by Reality check, had lyrics for other songs and was up until he left the site

6453568
Mostly rights and licensing. Intellectual property is a big business, people work really hard on these songs and it's just too hard to get the rights to use a licensed song. Yes, we all want more lax rules on rights, copyrights and licensing, but there are entire industries that revolve around this sort of thing. Hasbro is a brand and a lot of people are affected by that brand, they make money based on how well it does and part of that is recognition. So any harm to its reputation for whatever reason can hurt a paycheck. At least, from my very limited understanding of it. It's complicated.

I started writing my own songs and I write parodies. There's no rule against parodying a song or creating your own. Try writing your own music. Most of us already write our own fanfiction, so take the next step. It's really fun if you give it a try.

6453568
Copyright law is messy stuff. Trust the judgement of those that run the site and don't worry about it. They probably know what's up.

6453577
general rule of thumb:
Never trust blindly and always ask questions.

Following people blindly causes shit like youtube and their broken system where they delete videos on desire.

6453580
This site's been around for seven years. I trust that.

6453581
True. The fact this site doesn't make a lot is probably one of its savings graces.

6453568
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6453581

Yes, Hasbro could shut down the site if they wanted, as well as other artists. In fact, they have sent Cease and Desist orders to a few artists who were too good and making show-quality work with canon characters (JanAnimations, for one). However, they've generally been supportive of the fan community and fan-created content.

The RIAA and most music rights-holders (like Sony Recors or EMI), are not nearly so easygoing, and can get outright rabid about the use of copyrighted music and lyrics. Very short quotes are generally okay (one or two lines), but anything longer than that is likely to bring down the heavy hand of their lawyers.

Part of the problem is that early on a lot of less creative authors like to quote entire songs in their stories. Aside from being copyright violations, that's just flat-out lazy, and done at least in part to pad out word counts without actually writing enough original work. It still happens from time to time, but mostly gets caught by the moderators when stories are submitted.

6453605

Aside from being copyright violations, that's just flat-out lazy

To be fair, there are way more, and worse, ways to be lazy in terms of fanfics.

Like the hundreds of low-quality crackfics or those fanfics that just tries to be bad on purpose.
Or the stories that are just blatant copy-paste of other stories, like the millions of ''self-insert character goes to Equestria'

At least a good song can enhance the story or give a boost of emotional connection to the story or the characters.

What about songs you made up? In the fic I'm currently working on a character sings a song with 9 lines about cleaning your room. I made up the song myself. Is that okay to put in a fic?

6453612
As far as I know:

Direct copypaste = bad.

Parody or original songs = ok.

6453612
Yes.

6453568
The short answer is that the music industry is notoriously aggressive with copyright claims. The big record companies have bots trawling the internet for any lyrics under their domain.

6453605
Yes, that's why MY show using canon characters has to be BETTER than show quality! Muahahaha... Hasbro can't control everything! IT WILL GET OUT EVENTUALLY! HAHAHA

Honestly, the legal world is a very long and convoluted series of knots that people spend their entire lives trying to untangle and then retangle in ways that favor them and their friends. It's called being a lawyer. Eventually, the things we create will be truly free and until then, honestly if there's any problems with this site I think and I firmly believe Hasbro will be reasonable about them. I don't see any problems in the future unless Knighty starts making massive bank off the site and everyone starts driving around in solid gold pony-themed Hummers and the license plate reads M3335TER or F1MF1C.

6453609

That only works if the song is one that is well-known by the reader, since with only the lyrics one is missing the impact of the music. And if one is going for emotional impact, it's much better to write one's own original songs and poetry, since doing so will be better tailored to the mood of the story.

At least with crackfics or deliberate badfics, the writing is typically original, not so with quoting song lyrics. Again, quoting entire songs, or large passages of songs, is simply lazy writing, and verges on plagiarism just as any other copy-and-paste story bits would. This site is supposed to be about creating original work within an existing universe, not posting someone else's work under your own name. Anything quoted from outside the universe should be limited to a few lines at most. And like any other pop culture reference, one's story should stand or fall on its own merits, not the merits of the references used.

6453568
It exists because bots that search for copyrighted material and automatically flag it exist, and the RIAA isn't understanding about artistic license and and so forth. All that matters to them is commercial licensing, and you haven't paid the commercial licensing fee to use their material.
FimFic doesn't want those cease-and-desist letters.
The easiest solution is to have a policy in place giving FimFic an out to not have to deal with it.

That's the short answer; it's not hypocritical but rather it's about the pragmatism of where problems are actually likely to come from. Hasbro isn't keen on sending cease-and-desists. The music industry is. So those different situations are dealt with differently.

6453568 6453749 I would argue most of the problem exists because of 'The Mouse.' Disney did not want to lose copyright over their stable of characters and pushed the US into extending copyright... Well, forever in all practical terms. What is worse, Winston is also right. A copyright troll can use a software program to scan the internet and glom onto the smallest fragments of a song, then use the internet site ownership to send a letter threatening a suit. These trolls are *very* experienced, and they don't even have to get your case into court to bankrupt you, since the average cost of litigating a copyright suite is 250k-1m$ (and since they're cranking out pre-generated court documents, the troll cost per additional case is practically nil). Of course, the trolls will point that out, and for a small price of $10k or so, they're willing to drop their case (which of course may be an outright lie, because if they can soak you for 10K, they can soak you for 20K or more, particularly if you have deep pockets, because the mere fact you have the lyrics on a web site automatically puts you behind.)

Don't feed the trolls. Don't post song lyrics.

6453580

Who is Thumb and why does he not trust Blindly? Why does he always ask Questions, what does Questions know? Is Questions a search engine?

general rule of thumb:
Never trust blindly and always ask questions.

Following people blindly causes shit like youtube and their broken system where they delete videos on desire.

Yeah, except in this case you aren't following people, you're following rules that exist for valid reasons, there's a difference. Sure, you shouldn't blindly follow anything, but that doesn't change the fact rules exist for a REASON and aren't just there because they can be.

Curious, is it legal to make money off fanfiction? For example, if I sell my fanfiction on Amazon for money, is that illegal since the MLP elements in my fanfic are owned by Hasbro?

Just thought of the question while reading this thread.

6453777
Yeah, that’s illegal.

6453954
I figured. I swear seeing hardcovers of Past Sins being sold somewhere online, though.

Edit: Here it is

6453777 There's a long answer and a short answer. The short answer is : No. The long answer is : Heck, no.

6453991 The Past Sins hardcover (of which I have a copy) is the result of a delicate dance of finance and love, in which artwork was contracted for, printing costs evaluated, editing done down to the word, all culminating in a "It will cost $X per copy for this book in order not to make any money off it. Therefore I will charge $X plus shipping in order for the printing to wind up revenue neutral." (I.e. he didn't make any money off the book, and didn't lose any (or much) either.) Money is like blood in the water for shark/lawyers in the fan fiction lagoon.

Now once some people *purchased* the book, they went and resold it for a profit as a collectible, but that's a totally different can of worms.

6454016
Got it. Thanks for responding!

I don't know how true this claim is but I've heard that it has something to do with a genre of fics called songfics from the early 2000s.

These fics would merely be a in character set up before having them sing a song which would just involve copy-pasting the lyrics.

So the no lyrics rule is to stop that.

6453768
Ahh, yes, The Mouse. The Mouse is the major significant player in the history of all gobbledygook of the current copyright situation. I forgot about that.

6453568
Fan fiction doesn't violate copyright laws. As it's comprised of transformative, original storylines, it falls under Fair Use. Having song lyrics does not fall under Fair Use as it's just the exact lyrics of the song. That's why you can have a parody of a copyrighted song, but not the original.

6454123 6454108 Not *just* the Mouse. Everybody who creates content, then sees others making money off it.

A very good article on the concept:

http://www.trademarkandcopyrightlawblog.com/2016/10/10-copyright-cases-every-fan-fiction-writer-should-know-about/

The big thing about copyright is that it would be illegal to profit from these types of stories. Since they're hosted on a site to be read for free between fans and aspiring writers it does fall under fair use as long as you're not just copying entire scripts of the show unedited. Start making money from the stories though, like actually trying to publish it with known characters you don't own, will get you hit with the ban hammer so hard you might find yourself in jail.

Want to know the real reason that rule exists? No one has said it yet and i may be misremembering because it wasn't always like that. And if it was, no one cared/ enforced the rule.

The reason the rule exists in its current form is because of the Chess Game of the God's universe, popularized by the story Griffin the Griffin. Imagine a mass of stories quoting huge sections of popular songs sprouting up constantly (cause singing earth songs was a thing in that universe). Legal. Nightmare.

6453568
To confuse you.

6454016
Side note on selling fanfiction: Change the names and the setting a little, pretty easy to do with a search-and-replace, and now you have a new bestselling trilogy. Like no joke, 50 Shades WAS a Twilight fanfic with the names changed. There's also a brilliantly written Harry Potter shipfic that (somehow) made it to a bestsellers table at Barnes and Noble because 'Henry' and 'Drake' aren't 'Harry' and 'Draco', in spite of being copy-pastes of them.

So there's that little bit of grey area. Hasbro only owns MLP and Equestria, not the idea of talking horses, Pegasi, Unicorns, etc... It's an oddly fine line...

6454123

Fan fiction doesn't violate copyright laws.

Sorry, but you're WRONG!

Copyright covers original work AND ITS DERIVATIVES. Fan fiction, by definition, is derivative work. How do you know it is a derivative work? Easy. Remove all the characters (personality and descriptions) and locations used in the original work from your story. If your story becomes incomprehensible, then your work is a derivative of the original. Period.

I'm a publisher of primarily public domain books. I have extensive knowledge about copyright, from a practical POV.

6454144

The big thing about copyright is that it would be illegal to profit from these types of stories.

Again, not true. All a copyright owner has to do is show that you have "damaged" his ability to profit from his copyright (ie, make it likely that fewer people will purchase his copyrighted property). The SCOTUS ruled this in a case where a man was giving away copies of someone else's book.