I, hazily, recall that when Babylon 5 came out it was the first show where the creators used the internet to directly communicate and interact with fans. IIRC J. Michael Straczynski discouraged fans from suggesting future plot developments as there (presumably) had been copyright issues arising from the activity. That was quite a few years ago but I’ve not seen that issue arise since. I don’t make it a habit to frequent official messageboards of popular shows so perhaps they still discourage the activity. Anyway is this still an issue, and if not, why not? Were the B5 creators just extra cautious?
Still an issue. The main issue is having to defend against potential lawsuit. If you send the producers an idea, and they come up with the idea independently, they are concerned that you might sue that they stole it. Producers avoid even reading story ideas for this reason.
IIRC, Marian Zimmer Bradley had to rewrite a major portion of a novel for this reason; someone sent her an idea she had already planned to use.
That’s not quite what happened, as I understand it.
Marion Zimmer Bradley solicited stories written in her Darkover universe, and published them.
According to MZB’s associate Mercedes Lackey (Making Light: "Fanfic": force of nature) MZB liked one of the ideas in a story that she had published well enough that she asked the author if she could use it in a novel she was currently writing. The author threatened to sue.
According to the author (http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf.written/msg/80c1db3e5e35c1f9) MZB offered a nominal payment, and when the author attempted to negotiate, MZB threatened to sue her.
Regardless of which version you believe, MZB intended to use the other author’s idea.
My son is on the writing staff of a current TV show, and it’s still a big issue.
In other fields, I remember being on Usenet back when the collectible card game “Magic: the Gathering” was still young and Wizards of the Coast had a firm stance that they would not read any threads about new card ideas or entertain any suggestions. Their reason being the same as stated above; they didn’t want some numbnuts insisting that some new card was based off their posted card suggestion and now they deserved compensation.
Considering that when a movie is a big hit, people often come out to say, “They stole my idea and I’m suing,” even when there’s no basis for it, it’s not surprising that studios and TV shows create a Chinese wall against unsolicited ideas. There is really no way to send in an idea and have anyone read them; they will be returned to you unread.
I thought I remember hearing (possibly in the documentary Trekkies) that the Star Trek shows accepted fan contributions, although those might have been completed scripts and not just ideas.
a Chinese wall? how vaguely distasteful.
I recall reading an article in some magazine detailing how Lawrence Conley pitched his story idea that ended up being ST: TNG’s Silicon Avatar.
Star Trek used to have an open spec script policy up until I think the Voyager days?
There have been cases of the “Hey you stole my idea!” in Hollywood that turned out to have some basis. I remember hearing of two separate cases of it where they traced a sort of “chain of custody” of a film spec script to a certain producer’s script reader. Either the reader passed the IDEA of the script up to his boss and the producer had no idea it didn’t come from the reader or the actual script was sent up and the producer decided to just take the idea.
A friend of a friend story…so BIG grain of salt… I heard involved Ben Stiller and the movie “Dodgeball.” The FoF had been working on a movie about adult dodgeball and there was some involvement from Stiller’s production company(not a lot but at least a meeting connecting the two) and then the FoF project stalled a bit and then suddenly Stiller was involved with another movie about adult’s playing dodgeball with similar plot elements. The guy was pretty torn up because he felt like he had just been screwed and if you have no name in the business… suing basically means you’ll never go anywhere so he was prepared to let it go…and then a mutual acquaintance of his and Stiller’s showed up at his apartment one day with an envelope with undisclosed sum of money and the acquaintance said “I have no idea who gave me this to give to you…but he’s sorry for the way it was handled.”
Standard term. Refers to the Great Wall of China – something so massive that you can’t get around it. You hear it in banking and stock brokerages; it’s not considered pejorative since it is meant an an approving sense.
It’s not just movies and tv. On whatever forum Warren Ellis is running at the time, there is a clearly stated policy that you don’t write fiction, you don’t talk about things you’re writing, and if you do bad things will happen to you.
I’ve heard stories of it happening on webcomics too. It’s not AS big as a deal, but many of the writers say they try to avoid threads that talk about future plot developments. There are at least a few who have changed to story when somebody predicted it, out of a number of motivations. I want to say Order of the Stick was one, but I’m not completely sure.