DW1: AUTHORIZED!

[Shay Guy]

http://www.mercedeslackey.com/news.html

Apologies if this was already posted elsewhere and I missed it. So is Creative Commons workable?

---

Pronounced "shy guy."

[katreus]

That's awesome news, both in general and in specific (assuming Bob wants to post the DW1 chapters). Valdemar-verse is a fun verse to play around in.

[Logan Darklighter]

Wow! Awesome! Valdemar is a personal favorite and while I understood why Mercedes Lackey was averse to fanfic (the CRAP she had to endure in regards to the
Diana Tregarde stuff is legendary) I always thought it was a damn shame and I thought even all that taken into consideration that her lawyers took it too far.

[robkelk]

Bob, keep looking for work. You have two other DW stories on the go at the moment - don't bring a third into production while you're busy with the job
hunt.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Black Aeronaut]

YES! This is gonna be so awesome... But I think Rob's got the right of it. Don't let your eyes get bigger than your stomach, boss.

[Bob Schroeck]

Eyes bigger than stomach? Not quite. My first reaction was, "Oh great, does this mean I actually have to write the damned thing now? Where the hell did I
bury that sheaf of handwritten notes when we moved in 2000?"

And I have to go find out what I need to do to declare the license terms, too.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Wiregeek]

Drunkard's Walk by Bob Schroek is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.Based on a work at www.mercedeslackey.com.

Put that into the webpage, mention it in the fic.
Creative Commons is REALLY easy to license. In fact, that's done it, right there.
"No can brain today. Want cheezeburger."
From NGE: Nobody Dies, by Gregg Landsman
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5579457/1/NGE_Nobody_Dies

[Sweno]

Yay. One more reason to love Doctorow

and as others have mentioned, there are other things that come first, but this is something to look forward to (well at least some of us are )
-Terry
-----
"so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today"
TF2: Spy

[Bob Schroeck]

Thanks, WG.

Mm. Hey, Rob, just to be on the safe side, you might want to throw a CC notice onto Galactic Girls to cover Delandra's white-clad butt there.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Shay Guy]

Yeah, I think BY-NC-SA is the way to go here, as opposed to just BY-NC.

And don't worry, even if you put it right after 13, that still gives you, what, five years to find the notes?

---

Pronounced "shy guy."

[robkelk]

Thanks, WG.

Mm. Hey, Rob, just to be on the safe side, you might want to throw a CC notice onto Galactic Girls to cover Delandra's white-clad butt there.

Good idea. (adds to the to-do list, alongside "put chapter 3 on the FenWiki" and "give chapter 3 HTML-markup and send that to Bob")
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[robkelk]

Bob, I need to know which license you're going to use before I can choose a licence. Whichever I choose has to be no less restrictive than the one you choose, since LoGG is a derivative work from GGG.

(Edit: The only term Ms. Lackey requires is "Noncommercial", according to the webpage Shay Guy mentioned in the first post of this thread.)

(Re-edit: And "Share-Alike" is viral - if you use it, everyone who writes something based on DW1 would have to use the same license you choose, everyone who writes something based on something based on DW1 would have to do the same, and so on. I think that would mean, if you were to use Share-Alike, then I'd have to use it for LoGG, and then everyone else would have to use it for anything else set in Fenspace and referencing LoGG...)
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Shay Guy]

Ooh, good point. Hadn't thought of that. So BY-NC would probably make things less complicated.

---

Pronounced "shy guy."

[Bob Schroeck]

I'm going to have to go study the options, and I really don't have the time now. Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow. Sorry.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Bob Schroeck]

Okay, after reading through everything and considering it all, I think Shay Guy had the right idea. I am licensing DW2 as CC BY-NC, and DW1, when it is
actually written, will be the same. I'll be dropping Chris a line to see what he wants to do about licensing for DW5, and I need to talk to Helen about
DW13. If I didn't have to worry about what they would want, I'd just put a general BY-NC on the top DW page as an overall indicator.

ETA: Oh, and we'd better suggest to Ian that he consider a CC license, too...
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[robkelk]

Sounds good to me. I'll add a BY-NC licence to LoGG as well.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Bob Schroeck]

Hey, Rob, did Ian ever decide on a CC license for Dead Bang?
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[robkelk]

Good question... I'll email him about it now.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Dragonflight]

Wow. The acronyms are confoozing if you're just skimming.
I'm sure I'll probably do something straightforward and simple, but it hadn't occurred to me at the time. I think most people here know I went back to school last September, and while classes just finished last month, I'm now working full time at a law firm nearby for the summer. This was the first week, and I'm still parsing everything they taught me. Dell had a line they used called "Drinking from the firehose," which sums it up nicely.
I'll have another look at it when my mind doesn't feel like a limp noodle.
---
Those who fear the darkness have never seen what the light can do.

[Bob Schroeck]

No problem. (And apologies -- I keep forgetting you have a presence here, for some reason.)
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Logan Darklighter]

Hey Bob. You might've heard that I'm pretty heavily involved in the Titan Networks these days trying to save City of Heroes. 

Well so is Mercedes Lackey. 

Just thought you'd be kinda tickled at the following exchange, which went WAY off topic due to a tangent that I unwittingly provided. 

The thread where this was posted is here.

But the relevant bit doesn't start until page 3 or so. 

I'll quote it here: 
(BTW - Victoria Victrix is Mercedes Lackey)

Atlantea
But seriously, yes. VV - you are awesome. I've thought that long before I knew you played City of Heroes. Even when I disagreed with the stance that you used to hold on fanfic, I still thought it. One of my favorite authors plays the game? AWESOME. 

And you've been incredible with your support of the movement. 

If TonyV is the head and the brains and the drive of this movement, you're most certainly the heart and the inspiration and the love. 

(*Edit: Er... not to say you don't have a lot of the brains too. Certainly more than mine! Just... yeah. I think you get what I'm saying.)

Segev
I hope I'm not stepping in it here to ask, but...what is VV's stance on fanfic? (The one with which Atlantea indicated she disagreed)

Atlantea
Yeah - VV herself could tell you much better. But a thumbnail sketch from a layperson like me goes thusly - 

VV legally CAN'T read fanfic of her own stuff. 

Here's what I remember. Bad Memory disclaimer applies!

There was a legal furball between a friend of hers - Marion Zimmer Bradley (MZB) and a fan of MZB's work where the fan had written a piece of fanfic and some of the things in one of MZB's later works vaguely (VERY vaguely - as in you had to squint HARD to see it and even then...) appeared just enough close to the ideas in the fanwork...  

Basically MZB had a trusting relationship with her fans and she was also an editor and IIRC encouraged fan writers to develop their original ideas. That relationship was taken advantage of by this one person... Well it got ugly in a legal sense and actually prevented one of MZB's novels from ever seeing the light of day. 

Mercedes Lackey (VV) was not directly involved, but she SAW it happen and MZB was a good friend. (In fact IIRC wasn't MZB was one of the people directly responsible for ML's first publish of the Arrows trilogy?) 

VV for several years (over a decade I think) felt it necessary to discourage all fanfic based on Valdemar for concern something like the above could happen. 

Until recently where a legal way of doing so that wasn't a threat was established using the Creative Commons rules. See here at VV's website. 

http://www.mercedeslackey.com/news.html

And look at the bottom. 

Now - I didn't agree completely with VV's stance on that through the years. Mainly I thought she might have been a little over the top with it. But I certainly understood where she was coming from once I heard the story. 

Mainly I heard about it because the fanfic Drunkard's Walk about a cross-dimensional displacee named Douglas Sangnoir (Looney Toons) had as a canon element his first dimensional cross-rip visit was to Valdemar and out of respect, the author never actually wrote that segment. But started with the SECOND one, where he wound up in the world of Bubblegum Crisis.  

(BTW - I highly recommend Drunkard's Walk. It's very well written. And if you want I'll post a link to the page. But I may be biased since I'm one of the pre-readers on it.  ;D In fact the author - Bob Shroeck is a personal friend and my Supergroup leader in City of Heroes. And I'm proud to say I'm the guy who dragged him and the rest of the pre-reader crew for DW into playing City of Heroes with me.    )

Now - take everything I said above and file it mostly under SPOTTY MEMORY for I fear I'm glossing over or doing a disservice to VV.

SHE should tell you the story really. Not me. I only tell it from my POV to explain the "didn't entirely agree" statement above etc etc. 

So take this not just with a grain of salt, but take the entire shaker! Okay?

Victoria Victrix
I have to say, that I was always in favor of fanfic; after all I got my start writing it.  Darkover, Star Wars, Cthulhu Mythos, a little Indiana Jones...  Like MZB, I encouraged it.  Until Le Debacle.  Short form was that Marion read a piece by someone in the Darkover fan circles, liked how the author treated Lew Alton, and offered what was the usual arrangement, an acknowledgement of where the idea came from in the book that Marion was going to write.  Because, face it, it isn't the idea that is the work, it is the execution of the idea.  There was no offer of collaboration.  The author in question demanded full collaboration and payment, and threatened legal action.  As a result, Marion abandoned the half-finished book and destroyed the manuscript, which now will never be seen.  A doubly damn shame because this was one of the last things she was writing before her series of strokes started.  And at that point our mutual agent decided that Fanfic was Dangerous, and should be discouraged.  This made me sad, but the mess with Marion made us all super cautious.  

Fast forward to recently when Russ (my agent) got Cory Doctorow as a client.  Now, as we all know, Cory is Awesome personified, and is very, very much in the corner of the fanfic writers among us.  Cory persuaded Russ that it was a very, very good idea to allow Creative Commons licensing of fanfic, that fanfic is good for the author, good for the fanbase, and takes not one thin dime out of anyone's pocket.  As a result the only time Russ will turn into the Great White Shark is when someone is trying to make a profit out of fanfic.

I still can't read fanfic of my own oeuvre, which makes me sad.  But as the lawsuits against Stephen King and Jo Rowling have proved, you have to be able to rigorously prove you never saw someone else's unpublished stuff when they sue you for "stealing their idea."  But I am very, very glad that people can write their fanfic and share it now.  

And hey, Atlantea, tell Bob Shroeck he can go ahead and write the first segment now!

Now there are other writers who think that fanfic is taking some of their income.  Uh, no.  No one is ever going to write as fast as readers can read.  All fanfic does is keep the flame stoked during the wait for the next book.  But you can't convince these people, I know, I've tried.

There are other writers who don't want anyone messing with their world and characters (some have even described a feeling like "being raped" when they discovered there was fanfic about their stuff.  On the one hand, I kind of sympathize...but there is no way short of inventing mind control that any writer is ever going to be able to control what happens to his book, world, or characters once the manuscript leaves his hands.  So IMHO, I think you ought to just pull on your adult pants, face up to that, and wave goodbye to your book as it heads out into the world.  You did your best by it, you tried to make things clear, you gave it the best start in life that you could, but it's on its own now, and you can either make yourself crazy by trying and failing to keep control, or you can do the smart thing and go on to the next book.

Whew.  Sorry that turned out long and OT.

[Bob Schroeck]

Oh. Wow.

Cory Doctorow is not the only person who is Awesome Personified.

Until I can get over there myself, would you please forward my immense thanks to her? And that I now feel obligated to hit one out of the park with DW1?

Thank you!
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Pyeknu]

*claps hands*
Hey, Bob!  You got the go-ahead from the lady herself!  You rock, my friend!

[Bob Schroeck]

You rock, my friend!

Indeed, back and forth with my arms wrapped around my knees, eyes closed and gibbering softly at the magnitude of the challenge I have set myself...
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Labster]

Well, it looks like I'm going to have to buy some of the Valdemar books now.
-- ∇×V