Oh, I agree! The days of being under the radar are long gone, if they ever existed at all. There are tales from the 1980's of the 'sacred' Grandfather clause' which was why there has never been a test case for fanfic. Why it has only ever been C&D's as long as no profit was being made. I very carefully said profit being made rather than money changing hands, as the existance of zines was politely ignored by most copyright holders.
I've been googling 'grandfather clause fanfiction' and not getting much, but from memory: I think there was a legal opinion going around zine fandom in the earlyish days that if a copyright holder was going to go after a zine producer they would have to explain in court why they had chosen that particular zine producer and not the numerous zine producers before them. So, in effect, the copyright owners of Star Trek would have had to go and prosecute the zine producers in chronalogical order if they took such a case to court.
Not sure how viable that stance was, but it was something that had been bandied around fandom for years. So yes, we've never really been below the radar, but both sides have used that as a polite fiction to cover the situation.
With zines being very much on the wane and the transparently free fanfic economy of the internet, I suspect that polite fiction became even more entrenched. With so much fanfic out there, it is interesting that there is still not a test case. Yes, fans do succumb to C&D's, but it is interesting that no copyright holder (and there are some vitriolic ones out there) has yet taken it beyond a C&D.
no subject
I've been googling 'grandfather clause fanfiction' and not getting much, but from memory: I think there was a legal opinion going around zine fandom in the earlyish days that if a copyright holder was going to go after a zine producer they would have to explain in court why they had chosen that particular zine producer and not the numerous zine producers before them. So, in effect, the copyright owners of Star Trek would have had to go and prosecute the zine producers in chronalogical order if they took such a case to court.
Not sure how viable that stance was, but it was something that had been bandied around fandom for years. So yes, we've never really been below the radar, but both sides have used that as a polite fiction to cover the situation.
With zines being very much on the wane and the transparently free fanfic economy of the internet, I suspect that polite fiction became even more entrenched. With so much fanfic out there, it is interesting that there is still not a test case. Yes, fans do succumb to C&D's, but it is interesting that no copyright holder (and there are some vitriolic ones out there) has yet taken it beyond a C&D.