"Disclaimer: I don't own <thing>" (but yes you do actually) · 10:17am Jun 18th, 2021
Disclaimer: <Franchise> is the property of <Corporation>. I do not own <character(s)>. Further kowtowing to <supposed owner> ad nauseum, et cetera, and on and on and tediously on in a wall of text that I have to scroll past to get to the actual story.
Ahhhh. The DISCLAIMER.
The big, I'm-oh-so-humble, cover-my-flank proclamation. The ritual of professing to owning nothing, of all the credit going to someone else, of begging not to be sued, sometimes jokingly and sometimes in earnest.
Yeah, we've all seen this. You can't read fanfiction without tripping over some version of it. It's become an ingrained part of the culture. For decades, literal decades now, this has been the standard practice. Some consider it the gold standard, even a requirement.
And it's nonsense.
Stop. Just stop. Please. Stop doing this. These self-effacing claims to non-ownership are, in reality, to no purpose. Well, perhaps one purpose - to signal to readers that your writing conforms to an expectation that such a disclaimer should be present. That you know how this fanfiction thing works. But that's all it does. That's all it's ever done, really.
It began, at some point in the history of fan writing, in the theory that including such a statement would be legally protective. This was never a sound theory, unfortunately: think about it. If I went to the patent office and yanked someone's patent, then used it to build my own version of whatever device it described, but I stamped my knockoff copy with a little paragraph of text that said, "This patent is owned by InventorCorp, all credit to them. I'm just using their idea, but they still own it, no infringement intended," do you really, honestly, think for even a split second that lazily including a few pleading "don't sue me" words would somehow magically stop me from, in fact, having my actual literal pants sued off by InventorCorp's highly paid lawyers for patent infringement?
No, of course it wouldn't.
It would, in fact do the opposite - it would make my situation so much worse, and undermine any defense I might have had. By stating what I'm doing, right there in text I consciously chose to include, I've just admitted to knowing that this was someone else's intellectual property, and deciding to ignore that fact in the apparent full knowledge that this was not legal. Now instead of any room for doubt, I've cleared things up nicely. I've explained to the world that I KNOW I'm the one in the wrong.
Explaining to the judge that, yes, Your Honor, I knew it was wrong of me to run that red light, I just did it anyway... oh, but while I was going through the intersection I shouted out my open car window, "Disclaimer! Red lights mean stop, I don't intend to violate any traffic laws, but I'm going through anyway!" isn't going to get you out of the ticket. It's going to get you a bigger ticket. Maybe get it upgraded from a moving violation to a reckless driving citation.
See, that's the thing. You can't just "disclaim" civil liability or criminal culpability. Laws, for very good reasons needing no explanation, don't work that way.
On the flip side to this, it's surprisingly difficult to give up rights, too. Copyright is automatic on stuff that you write, including on fanfiction. Disavowing intellectual property rights by just saying "I don't own this" is a tricky proposition and probably not legally meaningful. If tested in court (and this has been tested, in some quite interesting cases) you'd probably find that you do, in fact, own the copyright to the individual pieces of fan fiction that you've written, because you're not a lawyer and you don't know how to navigate copyright law even if you wanted to dump ownership. You would likely find that you don't own the intellectual property rights to the characters, and perhaps some elements of the setting, but those aren't the story. If you wrote the story, you own that sucker.
My point to all this is that "the disclaimer" so stereotypical of fanfiction is bad practice.
It's not protective. It's not sufficient for any of the purposes it's nominally intended for. It wasn't written by a lawyer or someone who competently knows what they're doing in matters of intellectual property law. It doesn't do anything, other than possibly make things worse if you find that your fanfiction has landed you in a bad situation.
And, sometimes, it's an annoying fourth-wall break that readers have to get past to read your story.
All in all: it's time for "the disclaimer" to start being disclaimed by authors.
Agreed.
I heard that a while back, though nowhere near so thoroughly detailed. Still, always good to spread the message.
While the information I'm going off of is quite a few years old, I always heard it was better to have no disclaimer, so you could eventually claim you had no idea what you were doing was disallowed. Or something to that effect. :B
Personally, I'm a fan of anti-disclaimers. Why yes, I did create Twilight Sparkle and have full ownership over all My Little Pony settings and characters. :V Sue me.
I mean, nowadays I just do it for my fanfiction.net version of AJBS for every chapter because it's a gimmick; it'd feel off NOT to include the disclaimer now.
I can't stand seeing those stupid disclaimers in stories. Not for any of the reasons you've stated, but because it insults my intelligence.
"You don't own My Little Pony and its characters? Really? I'm so glad you said that because, honestly, I was just so confused! Here I am, a fan of My Little Pony, reading fanfiction on a website created by fans of My Little Pony for the express purpose of distributing My Little Pony Fanfiction, so there's no possible way I could have known that, you, specifically, don't own My Little Pony and its characters! This is such a huge weight off my back. Thanks, author!"
For Luna's sake. Is nobody aware of the little copyright notice on the bottom-right of literally every page of this site?
5537206
"...wait, so this story about Fluttershy marrying an anonymous human wasn't officially created or endorsed by Hasbro or the show staff? Well, that's settled that, I certainly shan't waste another second reading this unauthorised knockoff product!"
Funny. I was just thinking about disclaimers yesterday.
What brought it up is that I've been playing with the idea of making a crossover story. Now, here's a confession, I'm guilty of it, but not on this site, but another fanfiction site. But, if it is any consolation, that was from my crazy ol' days. I haven't touched a crossover since then, but have been thinking of it lately.
What helped me a bunch is to know that this site has a license to use MLP so I've never bothered with disclaimers here. What worries me sometimes is that the other work will rear it's ugly head and say, "You didn't credit me, and now I'm going to sue you." But, what gives me hope is what 5537195 said. Plus, I've seen enough crossovers hit this site, both mainstream ones (such as Harry Potter) and niche ones, so I think I'm safe. There is always that uncertainty though, ya know?
The thing is, that's only true for the US. In other jurisdictions in the world, those disclaimers *are* necessary and useful. Fimfiction is based in the US, yes; but it's used by people from all over the world, and for some of them, it's important to include that bit of text.
Personally, I don't see a problem with it. It's easy enough to scroll past, and seems a fairly petty thing to complain about.
Anytime I see it, I can't help but roll my eyes.
Good points. I've often wondered about the validity of copyright under a pseudonym.
Like charms and totems to ward away the Evil Eye or malicious spirits, we superstitiously recite folklore incantations in an attempt to protect ourselves from the Copyright Lawyers.
This along with the "contents of this email are confidential, if you did not mean to get this email do not share" are at least dying slowly. But if you're going to put in a disclaimer, at least have fun with it
5537900
Oh god!
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5537206
I feel you. There are so many things IRL that just account for everyone being retarted however.
Was preparing to reread "Master of the Empire" again and finally noticed the disclaimer. It's so accepted that I've just glossed over it, not even noticing it's stricken through, or a link. I finally see this and click it and find myself pleasantly surprised by a well-thought-out blog. You make a good point, thank you for getting me to think.
5739052
5739179
Interesting to see that people are finding and commenting on this blog again! Though I can't say I'm quite aware of why it would resurge. Would either of you be willing to share with me how/where you found it? I'm just curious.
5739190
Skeletor
5739192
...Fine, keep your secrets. 
5739190
There is a fic called "Skeletor, Master of the Empire" that has a link written into its disclaimer that leads here.
5739249
Oooooh, okay! Neat.