Name: Anonymous 2005-03-22 21:09
In Japan, Doujinshi authors don't get sued by the companies tthat own characters. Many companies consider Doujinshi to be a sort of fan appreciation of their properties, even if those fans have perverted minds. it can also be a sort of guage to see how popular a series is at the moment.
The US has seen a couple localizations of Doujinshi, such as "Plagiarism" from Jlist. The company that makes Sailor and the Seven Balls also makes exclusive (poor quality) doujinshi comics and animation.
The only real defense Doujinshi has in a sue happy America is the concept of "Sexual parody." In this case, parody is used without necessarily involving humor (though it can). Think of all the Mad Magazines, Maxims, or any other magazine that's had drawings of pop culture figures from comics, movies, scifi, games, etc. They obviously aren't selling someone else's work, but they ARE drawing the exact likeness of characters without the author's permission.
No big deal. But what about an entire comic? MAD might feature entire stories about Spiderman or Lord of the Rings, but not get sued due to its satirical nature (it may change names of characters, but often doesn't have to).
As far as sexual parody goes, doujinshi might have a remote chance of working. Considering all the fanfics being written, several pages of drawn art should still be able to be sold in conventions without drawin too much attention. As long as the characters aren't owned by someone known to be sue happy, like Marvel currently is with anything that even resembles one of their characters (City of Heroes).
But lesser known or more independant characters could slip under the radar if used in Doujinshi, such as Dark Horse, Image, Viz comics, etc. And games, tv shows, and movies could get the same treatment as long as it didn't stay on any major companies' permanent radar, such as Disney.
If magazines did have compilations of stories centered around sexual parody of copyrighted characters, it could say that the entire magazine is a general parody of everything, rather than having a specific character issue. Could it work?
The US has seen a couple localizations of Doujinshi, such as "Plagiarism" from Jlist. The company that makes Sailor and the Seven Balls also makes exclusive (poor quality) doujinshi comics and animation.
The only real defense Doujinshi has in a sue happy America is the concept of "Sexual parody." In this case, parody is used without necessarily involving humor (though it can). Think of all the Mad Magazines, Maxims, or any other magazine that's had drawings of pop culture figures from comics, movies, scifi, games, etc. They obviously aren't selling someone else's work, but they ARE drawing the exact likeness of characters without the author's permission.
No big deal. But what about an entire comic? MAD might feature entire stories about Spiderman or Lord of the Rings, but not get sued due to its satirical nature (it may change names of characters, but often doesn't have to).
As far as sexual parody goes, doujinshi might have a remote chance of working. Considering all the fanfics being written, several pages of drawn art should still be able to be sold in conventions without drawin too much attention. As long as the characters aren't owned by someone known to be sue happy, like Marvel currently is with anything that even resembles one of their characters (City of Heroes).
But lesser known or more independant characters could slip under the radar if used in Doujinshi, such as Dark Horse, Image, Viz comics, etc. And games, tv shows, and movies could get the same treatment as long as it didn't stay on any major companies' permanent radar, such as Disney.
If magazines did have compilations of stories centered around sexual parody of copyrighted characters, it could say that the entire magazine is a general parody of everything, rather than having a specific character issue. Could it work?