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Authorship and Ownership Authorship and Ownership: Everything is fanfiction and the illegality of copywriteright law Authorship and Ownership Everything is fanfiction and the illegality of copywriteright law Iris Vandeberg July 2018 MA Thesis North American Studies Specialization in Literatures and Cultures of North America in International Perspective Supervisor: Dr. Laszlo Muntean Student number: s0713945 Dedicated to my dad The sun to my moon “There is no justice in following unjust laws. ” – Aaron Swartz, 2008 ABSTRACT Authorship and Ownership - Everything is fanfiction and the illegality of copywriteright law: This thesis investigates the connection between authorship and ownership and whether it is sufficient to justify it as a foundation of the current U.S. copyright law, the alleged purpose of which is to promote, not chill, creative production. It will build a case against CR law’s treatment of genres like fanfiction with the help of narratological and linguistic evidence that reveals how the legally defined author is indicative of its lack of insight into the creative process, specifically the writing process and why we should accordingly look at alternatives that can ultimately replace it altogether. This thesis, then, tells the entire story of protecting stories, and why it is relevant that it does so now as well as in the case of fanfiction. Table of Contents Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 1-5 Chapter 1 – A text, a reader, and a writer walk into a bar: Authorship .......................... 6-51 R-W-T Triad ...................................................................................................................... 7-12 Intentional Fallacy ........................................................................................................... 12-18 Intersubjectivity .................................................................................................................... 19 Language Displacement ................................................................................................... 19-20 Signified and Signifier ..................................................................................................... 20-21 Diegetic Levels and Mimesis ........................................................................................... 21-26 External and Internal Stories ........................................................................................... 26-27 Reality vs. Fiction ............................................................................................................ 27-30 Unnatural Narratives ........................................................................................................ 31-35 PN vs. ON Theories ......................................................................................................... 35-42 Focalization and Inserts ................................................................................................... 42-45 Intertextuality ................................................................................................................... 45-48 Literature is Archontic ..................................................................................................... 48-51 Chapter 2 – Of poachers, pirates, and thieves: Ownership ............................................. 52-75 Author as Genius ............................................................................................................. 52-55 CR Law’s Purpose ........................................................................................................... 55-58 Characters’ CR-ability ..................................................................................................... 59-63 Pro-Fanfiction and Anti-Fanfiction Writers/Fans ............................................................ 63-69 Fanfiction = Fair Use? ..................................................................................................... 69-75 Chapter 3 – All written works are created equal: Alternatives to CR law ..................... 76-85 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 86-89 Works Cited List ............................................................................................................. 90-100 Introduction See? I told you not to worry. The title page was an exception and the rest of this thesis will all be typed in the glamorous Times New Roman font. The content page kind of gave that away already and should have eased your mind. But how did I know you were worried (but not you for instance)? How do I know that you probably think this is a very unorthodox and strange start to a thesis and you suspect that either a) I am not taking this serious or b) this is going to be a very weird and slightly psychedelic read that’s going to give you a massive headache. Wrong. This admittedly slightly eccentric kick-off does, in fact, pretty much strike at the core of what this thesis is all about: I, supposedly, own this paragraph, the preceding content list and cover page and the not yet read (unless this is not your first time reading this in which case don’t you have something better to do?) pages upon pages stretching out before you even though you can’t see them, all of it. Let’s assume this text does exist in its entirety, so including the parts you’re not reading right now, no, not now, just now, then, I mean now- Well, you get the point. It’s a fair assumption that this means that the continuation and regular usage of I is going to make you connect that I with me, that is, the writer of this thesis whose name can be found in all its incriminating non-anonymity on the title/cover page. But is that me? And, in turn, are you you? Take that italicized you between brackets at the beginning of this paragraph for instance. Performing basic reading comprehension steps it could be deduced that this you refers to all the yous who weren’t worried by the deviating font type used for the title (looks cool, btw, doesn’t it?), and thus can’t refer to the you that was/were worried (or experiencing a reaction similar to worry, no need to be that nitpicky). Then again, reading that particular you, I felt addressed too the moment I reread it after typing it. But how can a you become an I? How can you but not you become me? With all this potential pronoun confusion, caused by the deictic nature of language alone it seems, how would we define something like authorship? Do I determine the meaning of this thesis? Where does that leave you? Are we, in fact, the same in that we both consume and produce simultaneously? What are the dynamics between the triad of text/reader/writer? Do they fulfill separate roles or are they interchangeable as well as interdependent on one another? And if both reader and writer engage with the text in order to activate it, would we still be referring to the same text when it could potentially hold different versions and interpretations exactly because they require this individually (perhaps even inter-individually) differing activation? How about all the other texts embedded in one text? Can a text ever be singular or is it always inevitably plural? And if texts are inherently derivative because of 1 their intertextuality, how can we possibly define originality and, perhaps more importantly, defend its relevance or very existence even? If the author is not the only creator, if she is but a social construction, then whose story is it and what does it contain exactly? Are narratives direct representations of objective and intrinsic meanings found in the extra-narrative world or are they indirect imitation and subjective interpretations of it? And is, or can, a story at once be externally present and internally (re)constructed when both states are required? Is it ultimately, considering all of these and related questions, possible to subsequently equate or even link authorship with ownership? This thesis will argue that it isn’t. It will do so framed in direct response to the current U.S. copyright law which is based on this very connection but which offers no relevant evidence to back this claim up nor that its overly protectionist stance is conducive to its supposed goal of promoting creative production. This stance has lead to genres like fanfiction being liable to litigation for its overt intertextuality and blurring of the lines between writer/reader/text. At the core of this is that fanfiction reveals, or rather makes extremely visible, a type of authorship that is in direct opposition with the single author as owner definition that CR law relies on (and thus feels threatened by anything that exposes this to be a false foundation). This ‘new’ authorship that can be identified with fanfiction is, in fact, not exclusive to it but applies to all writing (creativity). I feel reluctant to insert a definition of fanfiction here seeing that most definitions, used by both its defenders and opponents, distinguish it by its seeming borrowing of characters and story elements or plot which are currently copyright protected, when in fact it is this obvious derivativeness that exposes how all writing is in fact fan fiction. Wonder out loud for a moment, like Sheenagh Pugh in her book The Democratic Genre – Fan Fiction in a literary context, how it is possible that although the material used by all writers are generally and historically speaking
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