NYU's student newspaper decided to feature fanfiction with a particularly local angle -- fanfiction set on its campus. "Remember when you were waiting for your acceptance letter? Whether NYU was your dream school or just your safety, you’d catch yourself longing for the city, dreaming of the day when you’d leave your home for the magic of New York...You weren’t the only one dreaming. In fact, some would-be students have dedicated hundreds of pages to their NYU-centric fantasies. So focused are these writers’ efforts that NYU Fanfiction has swelled into its own thriving—if slightly inaccurate—genre."

This is the last in a series of Q&A posts with Graham Reynolds, a Canadian copyright scholar from Schulich School of Law at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. The Q&A focuses on Bill C-11, which went into effect near the end of 2012 and made some significant changes to Canada's Copyright Act, some of which influence the way fanworks are treated under Canadian law. The first post, in which Graham answered questions about the general contours of the law and about the law of "fair dealing", is available here. The second post, in which Graham answered questions about the probable effect of the law on fanfiction, fanart, and fanvids, is available here.

Today, Graham addresses Canadian "moral rights," trade-mark rights, and rights of personality; and what the new law means for fanwork creators outside of Canada. Graham explains that creators of noncommercial fanworks may face challenges under Canada's moral rights law, which encompasses rights to integrity and attribution. Creators of non-commercial fanworks are less likely to face problems from Canadian trade-mark laws, but the answer regarding rights of personality is more complicated. Graham also explains that the law may have some impact on fans who are located outside Canada, because the law applies to some Internet activities.

On the Media aired an episode on the Past, Present and Future of Ownership, which included a number of good stories, including discussion of the art piece 'DRM Chair' "that collapses after just eight uses." Host Brooke Gladstone concluded with an observation on the origins of the word 'property.' "Eight hundred years ago or so, property’s meaning was pretty much related to the essential nature of something, as in it’s the property of water to conform to the shape of the vessel it’s in. The fact is property didn’t come to mean possession until the 17th century...Now our world runs on property...Once we dwelled in a brick-and-mortar world. Now, as poet Kenneth Goldsmith observed, we swim in a digital ocean. The only certainty is that in such a fluid situation, 20 years hence, property will not mean what it means today." (Transcripts available)

Posting on Mondaq, a legal, regulatory and financial commentary site, law firm Duane Morris offered advice to people about paying more attention to Terms of Service language at the sites where they post. "Smash Pictures produced a porn/adult movie entitled Fifty Shades of Grey: A XXX Adaptation. A predictable result was a lawsuit by Fifty Shades Limited and Universal City Studios, who own rights to the book franchise and movies respectively...the defendants raised an intriguing argument in Counterclaim, namely that the copyrights in the Fifty Shades of Grey books are invalid -- and free for everyone to use -- because 'as much as 89% of the content of the allegedly copyrighted materials grew out of a multi-part series of fan fiction called Masters of the Universe based on Stephanie Myer's Twilight novels'...So a distinctive point in the case was the role of the fan fiction site's user terms of service."