caveat scriptor

legal consultations for your fanfic. | we are not your lawyer. nothing on this blog should be taken as legal advice. | for a consult, send a submission.

[caveat-scriptor]

Caveat Scriptor

Caveat Scriptor is your friendly neighborhood fanfic legal clinic. Are you putting your blorbo through the legal wringer? Well, this blog can help. We can answer some of the questions you might have while crafting a story that involves the law.

Things this Blog Is Not

Legal advice. Seriously, the aim of this blog is to give fictional stories verisimilitude. That means that all analysis will be aimed towards serving a satisfying story goal and may not be realistic (the very low bar we're aiming for is mere possibility aka one step above impossible).

Law school or internship help. We aren't here to do your reading, write your memos, or draft your briefs. (Also, it should go without saying, but you should not be relying on this blog to assist you with real legal work.)

Legal consultations for non-fanworks. This is a free resource, accordingly we are am aiming this resource at writers producing works that will be made available for free to readers. There are highly qualified professional legal consultants out there should you need advice regarding non-fanworks.

LEGAL ADVICE. This simply cannot be stressed enough. Nothing on this blog should be construed or understood to be legal advice. The people behind Caveat Scriptor are not your lawyers, we are not your law firm, and you are not our client.

Submission Guidelines

Submissions Currently: Open

REMINDER: Please do not ask us for legal advice. If your ask comes across as asking for legal advice, it will be ignored.

Please include the jurisdiction that your story takes place in. At a minimum, this means stating what country your story takes place in. If your story takes place in the United States, please include the state as well, if you know.

Tell us what goal you are trying to reach with the inclusion of the relevant legal element. For example, if your goal is that some asset falls into a particular character's hands or that your character is threatened with some sort of legal consequence but ultimately escapes any repercussions, it's important that you state that so that we can answer your ask with that in mind. Sometimes the answer might be "this is impossible" or "this is illegal," but if we know your goal we can help you craft a plausible alternative.

Please don't be shy about the fandom/characters. Not all characters will respond the same way to the same legal circumstances; additional information about the characters (either because a mod is familiar with the source material or because you've provided that information) can be helpful.

Think about what information will be helpful to you and ask for it. If you only ask if x is possible, you may not get all the information you need.

FAQ

Are you looking for mods? Yes! If you are a lawyer or law student and are interested in being a mod, please reach out via Ask. Include your preferred contact info in the Ask.

What about the law in x country? This blog is currently aimed at stories set in the United States (though other countries with legal systems based on British common law may find this blog helpful). We would love to bring on some mods with expertise in other countries though!

Can I ask about law school? Sure, if you're writing a law school AU, ask away.

Can I ask about what a day in the life of a lawyer would look like? Sure thing if you're writing a lawyer AU. Keep in mind this differs greatly due to field, type of job, and geography.

Why is this taking so long? We are working lawyers and studying law students volunteering our time as a hobby. Real legal deadlines take precedence.

Resources

In the interest of saving our efforts for questions that are (fictionally) fact-specific, here are some useful guides outlining various (U.S.) legal processes. It will be assumed that you have read the relevant guides. If an answer to a question can be found in one of these guides, it will be ignored.

Elements of a Criminal Trial

Elements of a Civil Case

More to come...

Disclaimer

This is not legal advice. No attorney-client relationship exists between the mods of this blog and any reader of this blog.

[yidlifecrisis]

Can someone explain to me why someone is allowed to, with their brain and skills, write a spinoff or rewrite bits and post with chunks of my writing without my consent of my fanfiction, and they're allowed to download it in pdf and I have to allow it for all major fanfic sites, but genAI data scraping means I could file a copyright infringement complaint?

I'm struggling to figure out how legally those two things are different because I have been told off for being uncomfortable with unauthorised rewrites but now I'm being told I should use all tools including DMCA against genAI and I cannot figure out how these legally differ.

[caveat-scriptor]

Not legal advice, not an IP lawyer, and not your lawyer but…

Is your fic copyrighted? Yes, your original contributions are copyrighted. You just don't own the elements that were created by the creator of the underlying original work.

Why are people allowed to remix? This is largely cultural and also an administrability nightmare.

Culturally, fanwork is transformative and collaborative. There is a long history of remix culture that is part of the ethos of fandom.

On the administrability front, AO3 simply doesn't have the time or means to adjudicate issues of copyright infringement outside of clear infringement (wholesale, non-transformative copying). When someone makes an allegation of copyright infringement, unless the accuser is willing to take the accused to court, there is not legal remedy for the violation. AO3 is not a court and they are not set up to create reader trials to determine if a violation occurred and, if so, whether fair use would or would not apply.

You can't copyright concepts, only the expression of them (so the actual execution). So, unless someone literally copy and pastes your work, in the case of full re-writes it can be difficult to even prove the underlying copyright violation since you'd have to prove that they not only read your work but also that it was your work that they were copying (subconsciously or otherwise).

This a nightmare already in courts, so there's just no way AO3 could fairly administer such a scheme. Wholesale banning (or requiring permission for) remixing would lead to AO3 having to adjudicate alleged instances of unacknowledged remixing and determine if something is a remix of if it's just someone who had the same idea/concept applied to the same characters who would, informed by their canonical personalities and situations, generally react in a predictable way.

Why are people allowed to download your work? It is part of AO3's mission to promote accessibility, preservation, and user control over how they consume content. When you upload to AO3, you are agreeing to allow this to happen. If you do not want your fic to be downloaded without it being a copyright violation, you would need to host your fic on a site where there is an agreement between site users that downloading a fic for personal use is an approved use. You would also then have to personally pursue anyone you believe to have downloaded your fic for violating your copyright.

How is AI scraping different?

When an AI org scrapes your fic, they are explicitly not downloading it for personal use, which violates the agreement that users of the site made with AO3. Even they don't use your work to create derivative works, this is a copyright violation (unauthorized copying). (There's a sub-issue of whether the work is stored and could be reproduced on request which would be (unauthorized publication and dissemination).)

The fair use issue is undecided. Fair use is an affirmative defense to copyright violations, meaning that when someone makes the argument of fair use, they are admitting to the underlying copyright violation. Fair use just means you can't be punished for it. That's why even if AI scraping and training is fair use, it's still a DMCA violation.

Why do you have to file the DMCA claim? DMCA takedown notices must be filed by the copyright owner (you) or an authorized agent/service (simply not feasible for AO3 to be this service since it would require individual authorization from each author and require AO3 to keep track of scraping and then determine on a fic-by-fic basis whether they need to and are authorized to submit the notice).

[caveat-scriptor]

Looking for lawyers and law students!

Are you a lawyer or law student who would be interested in helping out fic writers who want to include legal elements in their story? Consider being a mod for Caveat Scriptor!

About

Caveat Scriptor is a resource (similar to the blog @howtofightwrite) for fic writers who want to include elements of the legal system (or law school) in their stories. By becoming a mod, you would be volunteering your time (as much or little as you like) to helping writers bring some legal verisimilitude to their stories.

Why

It's fun to engage with creative hobbies even if you don't have the time or energy to write yourself. And you can consider it the opportunity to consider areas of law that you may not usually get to interact with but without the pressure of having to provide legal advice (nothing said on the platform is or should be considered legal advice). The aim is some semblance to reality rather than strict legal plausibility.

How

Send an ask with your preferred method of contact!