Regarding Rules 3/7, and turncoat authors who burned their work

GurgleGerbil said:

I have no idea about the legality of it all.

I feel like the safe bet, if you're worried about getting sued, is to only share fanfiction and leave the original stories alone. I doubt you can get sued over a fanfic by the fanfic writer. Maybe I'm weird for never downloading anything, but it's just not a problem for me, so I've never put much thought into all of it before.

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Even if it is a fanfic, the author may not own the universe their story is in, they may not own many of the characters in the story. But anything original in that story belongs to them: Original characters, Original settings, Original plotlines as well as that particular original fanfic story. They are allowed to delete all postings on whatever site they used if they are moving to a different project, or even if they are just no longer writing. And doing so does not open that fanfic up for anyone to use willy nilly.

Dissimilate said:

Even if it is a fanfic, the author may not own the universe their story is in, they may not own many of the characters in the story. But anything original in that story belongs to them: Original characters, Original settings, Original plotlines as well as that particular original fanfic story. They are allowed to delete all postings on whatever site they used if they are moving to a different project, or even if they are just no longer writing. And doing so does not open that fanfic up for anyone to use willy nilly.

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Huh, I had no idea.

My gut just says 'surely no one will be shameless enough to sue someone else over a fanfiction'. My brain, on the other hand, says that someone absolutely is going to sue someone over fanfiction.

T_T

Saying that someone wrote something that they don't want to be associated with having written, even if it's true, is massively shitty. If someone is still an active user and you're openly discussing their prior works when they would prefer you did not, and are suggesting where people can go read them I cannot see how that wouldn't be a rule 1 violation, which does seem to actually be the official ruling.

GurgleGerbil said:

Huh, I had no idea.

My gut just says 'surely no one will be shameless enough to sue someone else over a fanfiction'. My brain, on the other hand, says that someone absolutely is going to sue someone over fanfiction.

T_T

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Honestly it would not be the first time for stupid lawsuits. And yes, I also consider it a stupid lawsuit but unfortunately that is just how laws work. But consider that an original character in a fanfic of one author, gets used by someone else in another (being rather sarcastic here) "completely original superhero story" (sarcasm in that the actual character belongs to that first author) and then a Marvel movie gets made of that character....thus you get a fanfic lawsuit for theft of an original character in a fanfic.

Dissimilate said:

[various claims that I'd be breaking the law]

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If I cared about laws, do you think I'd have written and published a fanfic that's arguably CP in my country? Do you think I'd have pirated a dozen VNs that are definitely CP in my country*? I subscribe to the philosophy of Paul Anka:

"For what is a man; what has he got? If not himself, then he has naught. To say the things he truly feels, and not the words of one who kneels."

*Not porn of actual children; Australia considers fictional characters that "are or appear to be" under 18 to be children.

magic9mushroom said:

-Actually admitted that you are in fact breaking the law-

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All I have done is given you a friendly Adult reminder that all choices end in results, some good and some bad.

I guess we've already gotten our answer about Rules 3/7 and all, so no point in dragging this out anymore. To be honest, not really happy with how I feel when I'm thinking about all of this, so I'll do the healthy thing and see myself out now. Thank you to everyone for remaining polite during this discussion, regardless of your stance.

I'm gonna ignore the thread so I don't get tagged by it if someone replies to me, so don't feel offended if I don't respond back.

Yeah, unless I'm misreading, then I think the official position of the mod team here is pretty clearly "No, you cannot post links to deleted stories/fics nor can you shamelessly tell people where to find them, as that would be a dick move and therefore against Rule 1."

Not exactly hard to understand, to be honest.

So QQ does retain the option / right / to override author wishes here, contractually speaking, but it would be a dick move and thus not a thing the mods would actually permit?

Ciber said:

So QQ does retain the option / right / to override author wishes here, contractually speaking, but it would be a dick move and thus not a thing the mods would actually permit?

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(I am not an agent or representative of QQ. But,)

QQ has the "you give us the right to publish your stuff" clause in its terms of service because, at the end of the day, QQ is a site, a legal entity, and a business.

That clause is there to stop a legal troll from posting something on QQ, then turning back and suing them because "i rescinded my consent for you to host my stuff three seconds after posting it, teehee" or something like that. Or some other bullshit

Would that actually work? No. The legal troll would most likely lose. But lawyers cost money, and having a "shut up I win on this point" clause on your side is a way to minimize your expenses.

Does that sound stupid? Of course it does. But this is also how the real world works. And companies need to protect themselves from "death by a thousand cuts" or "death by a thousand stupid lawsuits".

Anyways. Thats for why QQ has the RIGHT to do it, as per their terms of services.

Now, the reason QQ does NOT exercise that right to the fullest, in most literal sense is because:

LurkingInTheDeceit said:

There's such a thing as not shitting where you eat

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QQ is a forum, but socially it is mostly divided between readers and writers.

Writers post for free, for whatever personal reason they have, and readers delight in it.

You can think of QQ as the owner of a theater if you want. Or you can think of QQ as the person who owns the building that is rented by a swing club if you need a dirtier example.

But the thing is that QQ is a HOST, and it only sees movement if OTHER PEOPLE do stuff in it.

And when a reader starts stomping his foot on the ground, demanding QQ to also start filming what happens inside those four walls, because he wants a permanent record of his favorite movie (or favorite orgy)...

Well, QQ "has" the "legal" right to do it, technicaly.

But the complainer is just horny.

And QQ will fail as a business if it loses the trust if its user.

Coming from a person who left SV, and was very happy to exercise his right to torch some of the content i wrote there.

magic9mushroom said:

Actually, I forgot about this, but QQ actually has an explicit immunity in the case of works that have been published on QQ:



That's from QQ's TOS; anyone who published a work on QQ can't revoke QQ's licence to display that work.

I also forgot that mods do actually have version control, so you can actually still read all those fics on here and could let us peons read them again too by revoking the wiping edits and post deletions - with legal immunity, as noted.

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This is in every TOS you sign, people regularly find these clauses and have a mini-freakout, etc; abusing it is a good way to make people stop using your platform.

CriticalFailure said:

But if THAT is apparently illegal here somehow, but I still think it should be fine for someone to have storage somewhere off-site (whether as pdfs/txts, or posted on AO3, etc.), and be perfectly fine to link to it upon request, etc.
(again, if it was first posted for free on the internet anyway)


Mods, can you give clarification on this? On-site restoration of deleted/lost works is apparently not allowed. But what about offsite linking?

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The law prevents the rich as well as the poor from sleeping under bridges. If Disney had put the first three episodes of Andor up for free, no subscription required, and then taken them down, how legal would it be to go around reposting them elsewhere? The same is true of someone posting their fic, even if it feels different.

Vanbers said:

Stop it. Stop trying to bring laws and legality into fanfiction, and trying to make it a whole legal argument.

Nobody wants legality brought into the fanfic space, because as I said, it's a fight everyone loses. Literally everyone. The readers, the writers, the sites hosting it, all of them.

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The fanfic author owns the original part of their creative work (most of it, by volume). It is an unauthorized derivative work, which is a copyright violation. However, Master of the Universe is basically the same work as 50 Shades, and fanfic of Twilight, and the author did not pay Stephanie Meyers for permission, and it had multiple movies.

I will add my last 50 cents (since my coin purse is getting empty), but I believe this is a very gray matter. There are circumstances where archives for dead/removed stories are fine, where 'personally preserving a piece' is fine, and when none of that is fine.

First Case:
1) If the entire account got nuked for some random reasons (which is not related to a perma-ban or similar) and somehow this deletes the story;
2) The original author is fine with the archiving after being asked for permission;

Second Case:
1) Story is removed randomly, but you want to keep it around because you like it and want to re-read it whenever you want without raising a public debate about it;

Third Case:
1) Author removed the story, you ask or bypass asking for permission - at that point, there will be some bad blood from that specific community if that comes out. If the Author just stops writing stories of a specific kind because of this BS, then it all turns the original 'well-meaning' fellow into a scapegoat;
2) When you are treating the story not as a nostalgic keep but something to churn up social attention - dunno how effective that would be, but attention whores exist;
3) If you are keeping the story to be published again regardless of the reason it was removed just because you want to punch back at someone that 'scorned you'.

I would say that Point 3.3 seems most certainly the resolution for the first post of this thread - the point of archiving is not because of the sake of archiving, but because the first-poster was upset over why they were removed on the first place. And when this becomes reason for the author to stop writing, and readers find out about this, it can trigger some unnecessary conflict because someone felt butthurt and could not just keep the story for themselves and had to hate-post about it.

This whole thread has some interesting points, but I think they are all straying from the main topic itself - dude finds out that authors are deleting some of their stories for a very specific reasons, and rather than just be content to preserve the pieces for himself, he wants a sitewide rule to force authors to be unable to delete stories.

Last time I speak on this, but this whole thread has no point of existing IMHO.