Although Fanfic is a way to celebrate favorite works by offering new experiences, settings, characters, it is ultimately a critique about ownership. Henry Jenkins posits that fanfic is also a critical commentary on the original text. Both of these lenses provide a largely positive frame from which to evaluate fanfic. However, there are others who view the phenomena of fanfic as “intellectual laziness” and an infringement of the original author's intellectual property.
In the coming weeks, I want to explore this contested space in order to tease out the issues of ownership, critical commentary, acts of borrowing/stealing/remixing within a participatory culture and to situate within the larger discourse of intellectual property. Is fanfic becoming more or less of a contested space in the later half of the decade? How has the internet impacted this genre? Are certain fanfic writers given more license and are less likely to be censured? If so, who and why? How is IP infringement conceptualized? What is the impact of fanfic on the market? What about on an author's moral right to their work? What are the future directions of fanfic?
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You pose some very interesting questions concerning fanfiction and its future. Yet another good post.
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