The intentions were very good, yes, but they have come face to face with reality. Yesterday we told you that Bill Willingham had decided to release his greatest work, ‘Fables’, into the public domain so that everyone could make and market works based on his without anything stopping them, with absolute freedom and totally free. A good Samaritan? DC has said it’s crazy.
Distinguished Comics
“The ‘Fabulas’ comics, as well as their stories, characters and elements, are the property of DC and are protected under the copyright laws of the United States and around the world, and are not in the public domain,” the company says, warning that they will do everything in their power to protect intellectual property rights. If you thought this soap opera was going to end with Willingham giving his work to the people, give it another spin.
The author himself has made the rules of the game clear: no, putting the title in the public domain does not make it so that just anyone can reprint the books and stories, any more than others could reprint your own stories from the franchise. “‘Create your own’ is the new order. No, I’m not bitter about ‘Fables,’ and will happily sign your books and talk about ‘Fables’ at conventions,” the author has said on Twitter, pretending he hasn’t listened to DC.
Apparently, the thing is not one color or another, but the contracts make it tremendously complicated to get away with it. Add to that the fact that public sentiment towards the author has gone in just one day from “hero of the people” to discovering his “Likes” to transphobic and racist tweets. For whatever reason, they have not fallen with their hands in front of them.
Honestly, if DC wants to fight back, it will do so with the full force of Warner Bros. lawyers. Willingham stands to lose hundreds of thousands trying to defend himself, and, by all accounts, he doesn’t. Should DC pay him fairly? Of course. Is he going to win this fight? That’s part of the fiction and the… fable.
