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I normally wouldn't bother to stick my toe anywhere near a discussion of the merits of fanfic and "real people stories" (RPS), but I am compelled to point out what, to me, has always been obvious:
1. There is no text to poach, in real people stories.
You -- I, as an author -- know nothing about these people. Reading a magazine article that Ioan Gruffudd likes a particular brand of scotch is *nothing*. It tells you nothing about his mode of thinking, how he responds emotionally to grief, or anything at all about what the inside of his head might be like.
Elijah Wood is not Frodo, any more than he's the Artful Dodger, so you can't extrapolate behaviors from LOTR or Oliver Twist and assign them to the actor. You can, and fanfic writers do, assign them to the character. Because that is what the actor is doing, playing someone else. If they're doing their jobs right, it's not them on screen, it's the character.
2. I do find it personally reprehensible.
Waving off the question of "how would you feel if it were you and your best friend being written about", which![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
telesilla did in her post on this subject as a "bullshit question", doesn't do it justice. I don't think that's a bullshit question at all, given that so many of us follow one or more value systems that include empathizing over the effects of an action on someone else. Why is it not OK to ask how you would feel if you were the object, and not the one with the gaze?
I wouldn't want someone writing fiction about me, because it's dangerously close to, if not spot-on, libel, especially if it involves, say, sexual activity of which I may not approve IRL, given this society's particular obsession with sexuality and sexual pecadillos -- it could be any activity. And, again, the author would have no way of knowing whether I approve of such activity IRL because...see #1.
I have family in "the industry", and I would be appalled and deeply offended if a complete stranger, on the basis of no research or real data about, say, my brother, decided to write a story about him fucking anyone other than his wife. Because *I* know, and he knows, and *she* knows, that's she's the only person he *does* fuck. But now someone has just gone and written otherwise.
Which leads to my last point,
3. The professional persona.
That's a celebrity's name being used in a story that he or she did not permit or approve, and as such, it's a violation of his or her rights to their professional persona as an actor, as a celebrity, which has a certain value associated with it. It's considered property, such that he or she has the right to control how that property, that marketeable name and image, gets used.
When you write stories about real people, you're blurring the lines between news and fiction in a major way, whether you've put up a disclaimer that "this is fiction" or not. People have sued over less, over having "fictional characters" in a novel obviously be based on them, much less "fictional stories" that use their actual names.
It's hard enough trying to rationalize fanfic under a fair-use argument against violation of copyright; I don't see where to even start trying for RPS. There is no fair-use for people.
Edited later to add:
(Just so you know, since the discussion in comments is getting a little technical, and actually, by now has no doubt run up to the limits of my legal knowledge: I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on TV.)
1. There is no text to poach, in real people stories.
You -- I, as an author -- know nothing about these people. Reading a magazine article that Ioan Gruffudd likes a particular brand of scotch is *nothing*. It tells you nothing about his mode of thinking, how he responds emotionally to grief, or anything at all about what the inside of his head might be like.
Elijah Wood is not Frodo, any more than he's the Artful Dodger, so you can't extrapolate behaviors from LOTR or Oliver Twist and assign them to the actor. You can, and fanfic writers do, assign them to the character. Because that is what the actor is doing, playing someone else. If they're doing their jobs right, it's not them on screen, it's the character.
2. I do find it personally reprehensible.
Waving off the question of "how would you feel if it were you and your best friend being written about", which
telesilla did in her post on this subject as a "bullshit question", doesn't do it justice. I don't think that's a bullshit question at all, given that so many of us follow one or more value systems that include empathizing over the effects of an action on someone else. Why is it not OK to ask how you would feel if you were the object, and not the one with the gaze?I wouldn't want someone writing fiction about me, because it's dangerously close to, if not spot-on, libel, especially if it involves, say, sexual activity of which I may not approve IRL, given this society's particular obsession with sexuality and sexual pecadillos -- it could be any activity. And, again, the author would have no way of knowing whether I approve of such activity IRL because...see #1.
I have family in "the industry", and I would be appalled and deeply offended if a complete stranger, on the basis of no research or real data about, say, my brother, decided to write a story about him fucking anyone other than his wife. Because *I* know, and he knows, and *she* knows, that's she's the only person he *does* fuck. But now someone has just gone and written otherwise.
Which leads to my last point,
3. The professional persona.
That's a celebrity's name being used in a story that he or she did not permit or approve, and as such, it's a violation of his or her rights to their professional persona as an actor, as a celebrity, which has a certain value associated with it. It's considered property, such that he or she has the right to control how that property, that marketeable name and image, gets used.
When you write stories about real people, you're blurring the lines between news and fiction in a major way, whether you've put up a disclaimer that "this is fiction" or not. People have sued over less, over having "fictional characters" in a novel obviously be based on them, much less "fictional stories" that use their actual names.
It's hard enough trying to rationalize fanfic under a fair-use argument against violation of copyright; I don't see where to even start trying for RPS. There is no fair-use for people.
Edited later to add:
(Just so you know, since the discussion in comments is getting a little technical, and actually, by now has no doubt run up to the limits of my legal knowledge: I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on TV.)