Fanlore:Featured Article Archives/2021: Week 26
A Matter Of Willful Copyright Infringement is the first part of a 1992 two-part article by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro. The second part is titled Copyright Infringement Part II."
The article's topic was the fanfic "The Adventure of the Gentleman in Black" which was printed in the zine The Holmesian Federation #8. Yarbro's complaint was that this story used Yarbro's character "Count Saint Germain" (who in turn is Yarbro's use of the real historical man named Count of St. Germain), after Yarbro had denied the author permission to use her character.
Yarbro described how her lawyer, Robin Dubner, attended a party and was given a copy of The Holmesian Federation #8. The lawyer, "being a very canny person... asked her co-host if she could borrow the issue, since clearly the story was too long to read while at the party. She promised to return the issue at week's end. The co-host agreed, and the next morning Robin Dubner called me to warn me we had trouble."
"A Matter Of Willful Copyright Infringement" was published in two parts in the "Horror Writers of America" newsletter which at that time was called "Transfusions" (January 1992?), and was reprinted in SFWA Bulletin (Summer 1992, Fall 1992). In Part 1, Yarbro described the situation of a fanfic proportedly infringing her copyright as "a horror story, a for-real horror story" and contended that a fanzine selling for $6 per issue was still making a profit off her work.
In Part 2, she detailed her plans to turn seized copies of the zine into "a larger-than-life-sized papier-mâché bust of the Count" and lamented the fact that the zine's editor and the fic author were reluctant to apologise for their actions, and that they did not have enough money to compensate her for legal expenses.
This all took place against a backdrop of increasing tension and hostility between professional writers and creators of fanworks. At the time and shortly afterwards, considerable debate raged as to whether Yarbro's response to the zine was disproportionate or justified. Today it is remembered as one of the more notorious incidents of creators taking action against fanworks.