Wow. I haven't had enough coffee yet to be tactful, so I'll just say
good grief! What was she thinking?
Thanks for the link to the article, Rivka. Your friend is obviously knowledgeable about fanfiction and fandom. This is so true:
But the group most outraged by this, probably even more so than Lucas' legal staff, is the fan fiction community. When you know that what you are doing is, at best, tolerated by creators you respect who can make you stop at any time, you get very annoyed when someone walks up and slaps them. All it would take is for enough authors to start yelling: "That's it, everyone out of the pool," and the online world of fan fiction would fade away.
She is certainly correct in later saying that fanfiction will never entirely disappear (and the overall quality might even improve if it suddenly took a lot more effort to disseminate our writings) but it would make me very sorry to see it under major attack. I'm sure I'm not the only one who would weigh the pleasure of writing against the threat of getting sued and decide that being able to send my kids to college was just probably more important. I am most happy when I can tell myself that fanfiction is slipping under TPTB's radar.
One of the most fascinating things about fandom to me is how effectively it polices itself considering the diversity of the fans. Rules regarding feedback etiquette, intolerance of plagiarism, respect of source material, etc. might differ slightly from one fandom to another, but there is always a code by which a writer must live if he/she wants to be welcome. I suspect that no matter how the Lucas lawyers choose to respond, this author will receive a smackdown from her fellow fanfic writers that will serve as a warning to any other writer considering a similar path.
/coffee ramble.
Caroline
