There’s surely some kind of sliding scale. My HP fanfic:
Harry took the machine gun, and gunned down the Dursleys for being abusive parents. The End
is critical of something—but if it isn’t the Potterverse, then it isn’t parody. That doesn’t mean that the work is not fair use (I think the third and fourth factors weigh heavily in my favor).
In short, I don’t think that an interpretation of fair use (of which parody is the relevant type) that protects all fanfic is likely to be adopted, even if MoR was fair use of the Potterverse.
In short, I don’t think that an interpretation of fair use (of which parody is the relevant type) that protects all fanfic is unlikely to be adopted, even if MoR was fair use of the Potterverse.
As I was trying to say, it is hard to articulate a test that is both (1) sufficiently clear ex ante and (2) correctly divides works like MoR from the mass of fanfic. Specifically, I doubt that there is sufficient consensus on where the dividing line should be.
And in general, the major critique of fair use is how unpredictable it is in practice.
There’s surely some kind of sliding scale. My HP fanfic:
is critical of something—but if it isn’t the Potterverse, then it isn’t parody. That doesn’t mean that the work is not fair use (I think the third and fourth factors weigh heavily in my favor).
In short, I don’t think that an interpretation of fair use (of which parody is the relevant type) that protects all fanfic is likely to be adopted, even if MoR was fair use of the Potterverse.
Naturally, but we’re discussing MoR here.
As I was trying to say, it is hard to articulate a test that is both (1) sufficiently clear ex ante and (2) correctly divides works like MoR from the mass of fanfic. Specifically, I doubt that there is sufficient consensus on where the dividing line should be.
And in general, the major critique of fair use is how unpredictable it is in practice.