Should the prohibited content rules for Scribblehub be ammended to include Illegal Monetization?

[Tyranomaster]

In kind donations when you produce no other works is taxable income and would be considered to be income related to that work. You might have a weak defense if the person produces many other works, but if they only produce one work, it's directly linked.

Further, you've stated yourself that there really isn't settled law on the matter, and that also applies to fairuse for fanfic, there are some edge cases that are settled that established that the work must be sufficiently transformative and have real cultural value by making commentary on the original work.

There have been many cases that ended in settlement between the parties involved without adjudication, and as far as I can tell, most of those have resulted in favor of the original copyright owner, likely after legal council advised it. Some weren't, but in either situation no case law was established.

Royalroad does not allow, as you put it, 'marketting' for fanfics. No ads. No linking to funding websites

Fairuse law is also far more narrow than people think, especially when it comes to creative works like stories or movies. They have strong copyright protections because they were creative already. Alternative timelines with the same characters are hypothetically something the original author may want to write (as a derivative work) and would be protected from most fairuse claims, as the original copyright owner has those rights as well.

Fairuse is a case by case basis, and usually requires a number of factors to align as a defense. Including making money. Works can even be fairuse when making money. There have only been a handful of cases where that happened, and the work was highly transformative in each case.

As for why should one punish fanfic writers here? On Scribblehub, the home of original content? Last I checked, original content doesn’t need fairuse protections.

 

[DireBadger]

In kind donations when you produce no other works is taxable income and would be considered to be income related to that work. You might have a weak defense if the person produces many other works, but if they only produce one work, it's directly linked.

Except that taxable income has no bearing on copyright law.

"In-kind donations" is a marketing term used for a completely different sort of commercial interaction. Buzzwords used on procedural crime dramas do not reinforce your argument, and comparing fanfic to the term used as a shallow excuse to prosecute prostitution really tells us where you are coming from.

Patreon does withhold taxes when you set it up, and there is NO law against individual performance of another's work, or else millions of buskers would never be able to get a license. I AM a busker, I know exactly how far fair use covers performance and tax law. Your argument holds zero water.

Royalroad does not allow, as you put it, 'marketting' for fanfics. No ads. No linking to funding websites

Incorrect. You are perfectly welcome to have both a Patreon link and a fanfic tag on your work. I am literally looking at the page right this second.

You cannot MARKET fair use. You can, however, still accept donations. And that seems to be what you are having trouble wrapping your head around. This whole 'it is a threat even though it has never been tested' is the same sort of tired argument that government anti-vapers make to justify treating it worse than cigarettes. "There may be untested health effects in the future! Panic!" when, so far, forty years of vaping has only been hazardous when people gave their modkits a Tim Taylor overhaul and torched their lungs.

It's a nothing argument. Your claims that it is 'illegal' are false. It's like claiming that 3d golf and eating saurkraut on the couch is illegal even though no one's ever been sued for it.

As for why should one punish fanfic writers here? On Scribblehub, the home of original content? Last I checked, original content doesn’t need fairuse protections.

Are you being sarcastic? Or are you just angry that Adamos is making about ten times as much as you on Patreon? That would certainly put an entirely different complexion on the argument.

 

[Tyranomaster]

I'm not going to bother looking up whoever Adamos is, nor do I care.

The practical argument for whether any serious litigation might be brought against SH is likely less than 1% a year. Not zero, but not high enough to warrant immediate pressing concern.

Performance and written works are different things with different case law. Song performances and covers require licensing, for example.

Incorrect. You are perfectly welcome to have both a Patreon link and a fanfic tag on your work. I am literally looking at the page right this second.

Sure looks like, in plain text, you cannot. Right on their rules. Don't blow smoke up my ass. See the attachment. Black is RR, White is AO3.

I now trust 0 of the rest of your arguments at all, and will no longer respond. If you'll lie to send me out and about to waste my time, it isn't my problem

For good measure here is also where AO3 says they don't allow collecting donations for authors either.

 

[DireBadger]

Guess what? You just disproved your own argument. In no place does Royalroad SPECIFICALLY prohibit fanfic writers from using Patreon?

Fanfic cannot 'add' buy or donation links. HOWEVER, author donation links are still completely legal. Why? because supporting a writer who writes fanfic is completely legal.
And I am not talking about AO3 definitions. You might as well start whining about open gaming license or Mozilla rules.

But please, keep lying and drawing conclusions from false data. Oh, and PLEASE keep using terminology like 'in-kind donations'. It's hilarious, like watching a toddler trying to quote an eddy murphy movie..

 

[Tyranomaster]

Guess what? You just disproved your own argument. In no place does Royalroad SPECIFICALLY prohibit fanfic writers from using Patreon?

Fanfic cannot 'add' buy or donation links. HOWEVER, author donation links are still completely legal. Why? because supporting a writer who writes fanfic is completely legal.
And I am not talking about AO3 definitions. You might as well start whining about open gaming license or Mozilla rules.

But please, keep lying and drawing conclusions from false data. Oh, and PLEASE keep using terminology like 'in-kind donations'. It's hilarious, like watching a toddler trying to quote an eddy murphy movie..

I'll break my own statement about not responding to admit an error on my part, and point out an error for you.

In-kind was wrong. Quid pro quo was what I meant. Yeah, I was a fool in phrasing, and sounded like a loon there.

Anyway. Royalroad doesn't have author donations. That isn't a thing there. You only have donations on the author dashboard which is linked to the fictions themselves on RR. They don't have a rule for it because it doesn't exist.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

Reported this thread. Hopefully it will be locked.

 

[Alski]

 

[beast_regards]

There are already DMCA notices in existence. I cannot help but wonder why you feel the need to attempt to 'punish' fanfiction writers. Does it have anything to do with the fact that Adamo pulls over 1200 dollars a month from his patrons?

He was quite clear in his motivation....

They make money, and he wants that money for himself, even though he is not even the owner of the intellectual property in question.

As for *Some kid gets a free 10 dollars*. If it was some kid getting 10 bucks, I wouldn't care. It's people pocketing hundreds, sometimes thousands a month off it. That's drug dealing levels of money. They're up on the front page right now.

 

[owotrucked]

Reported this thread. Hopefully it will be locked.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

No need to dunk on me so hard. ?

 

[DireBadger]

He was quite clear in his motivation....

They make money, and he wants that money for himself, even though he is not even the owner of the intellectual property in question.

If people can make drug dealer levels of money without actually hurting anyone, more power to them. His argument revolves entirely around the idea that people writing over nine THOUSAND pages of their own hard work are somehow his social inferiors because they started from an established world instead of being an 'idea man' like he is.

I made video games for years, and I can tell you one absolute rule: Idea men are worthless. They soak up money and are arrogantly convinced of their own superiority.
GOOD writers are all about taking a storyline and making it into a real story. WHERE that storyline comes from is irrelevant. There are BILLIONS of potential storylines floating around desperate for a good writer to turn them into real stories. Scratch an idea man, find a story that has simply had the vin number filed off and a huge stock of pride.

That kind of pride eats at you until you do something silly and shortsighted.

BTW- Glad to see you are still writing Mook maker after 3 years :) I remember when it was only 8 chapters :P

 

[Alski]

He was quite clear in his motivation....

They make money, and he wants that money for himself, even though he is not even the owner of the intellectual property in question.

 

[beast_regards]

Two medals for stupid already, and I am heading get my third!

 

[Alski]

 

[laccoff_mawning]

his social inferiors because they started from an established world instead of being an 'idea man' like he is.

I see nothing wrong with this statement.

 

[owotrucked]

The stupid thing is to pass up the opportunity to sabotage someone more successful than you

They show an opening? Courting death!

 

[beast_regards]

If people can make drug dealer levels of money without actually hurting anyone, more power to them. His argument revolves entirely around the idea that people writing over nine THOUSAND pages of their own hard work are somehow his social inferiors because they started from an established world instead of being an 'idea man' like he is.

He is not an "idea man". He is a bureaucrat. As any other bureaucrats, he is more concerned about the stifling any development to maintain the relevancy of his position. Same as when he argued that the rejection on the Royal Road was about "people don't understand dealing with authority" rather than considering whether any of the senseless restriction they had placed on writers have any merit, because ... bureaucrats won't pass on opportunity to bolster their self-importance by making up the pointless rules. Now, he wants to export that nonsense here.

 

[justabot]

It looks like it's going a bit off topic into drama. Locked.