User:SOTO/Forum Archive/Inclusion debates/@comment-1506468-20190827123101/@comment-6032121-20190828225958

I continue to disagree that fiction published personally (that is to say, released personally by the author, as opposed to released via a publishing company, whether or not it is one the author happens to also own) is automatically fanfiction. Fanfiction's primary characteristic is not that it is published on the Internet, but that it is published without a license.

Again, the notorious novel Worm was released on the Internet, without a specific "publisher", but that doesn't make it fanfiction, because the author wasn't using any concepts he didn't have the rights to. Nor would any sane person say that means Worm hasn't been officially released. Same thing here: if he had been writing fanfiction, Mr Wylder wouldn't have asked for permission prior to publishing the damn thing.

You say there is "legal fanfiction where permissions were obtained", but by most people's definition, this is an oxymoron. As I said above, equating this with J.K. Rowling's endorsement of Harry Potter fanfiction is a false equivalence. Fanfiction can be tolerated, authors can and do say ‘I love that fanfiction exists, so I won't sue anyone who writes fanfiction of my stories, pinky-promise’. But that's along the same lines as DW charity publications where the BBC kindly does not sue a publisher because they've said they'd give the money to charity so it would kind of be a douchey move to sue them. Wylder explicitly getting permission from the copyright-holders ahead of time, and planning to reprint the stories commercially, is quite another thing.

Whether through Arcbeatle Press or not, Wylder had, by all appearances, every right to release a story featuring those DWU concepts. He did. How he chose to do so, and whether that story is later rereleased in print through Arcbeatle, doesn't make the prior, modern-style, webnovel-style release "fanfiction". He had every legal right to publish these stories; and he did release them, in the common-sense meaning of the term that he made them accessible to any audience whose fancy it caught to read them.

…All this being said, just checking: you do agree that even if we forget about Release #1, Releases #2 and #3 would be enough for the stories to pass Rule 3, yes? (In which case, though this is nitpicking, you can't say you disagree with "everything" that has been said in this thread.)