> Derivative creations of your work that might not be transformative enough, but aren't intended to copy your work directly, might not trigger your enforcement?
This is a tricky balancing act and has come into play for me with translations. There are several translations of both of my books, but they have all been done using real publishers with real contracts and stuff.
I've had a number of people volunteer to do community-driven free translations but so far have declined.
Part of being a publicly visible creative person is that my name and identity have a certain reputation attached to them, and that reputation has real value for me both emotionally (it feels good to know people think I'm cool) and economically (a lot of people bought my second book simply because I wrote it). Transformative works that are still explicitly and visibly derived from me run some risk of dilluting or weakening that reputation. (Of course, there is also the chance they can elevate it.) Imagine if, say, a Portuguese fan translation of one of my books has some racial slurs inserted it and now everyone in Portugal thinks of me as "racist author Bob Nystrom".
Since I only have one real identity on this planet, I tend to be cautious about allowing other creative people to visibly build on it, even when they do so with good intentions. Much of this is probably just because I'm a perfectionist.
On the other hand, there is some stuff I've been happy to see: many people have translated the code in the book to other programming languages, and several have done video series' about the book.
This is a tricky balancing act and has come into play for me with translations. There are several translations of both of my books, but they have all been done using real publishers with real contracts and stuff.
I've had a number of people volunteer to do community-driven free translations but so far have declined.
Part of being a publicly visible creative person is that my name and identity have a certain reputation attached to them, and that reputation has real value for me both emotionally (it feels good to know people think I'm cool) and economically (a lot of people bought my second book simply because I wrote it). Transformative works that are still explicitly and visibly derived from me run some risk of dilluting or weakening that reputation. (Of course, there is also the chance they can elevate it.) Imagine if, say, a Portuguese fan translation of one of my books has some racial slurs inserted it and now everyone in Portugal thinks of me as "racist author Bob Nystrom".
Since I only have one real identity on this planet, I tend to be cautious about allowing other creative people to visibly build on it, even when they do so with good intentions. Much of this is probably just because I'm a perfectionist.
On the other hand, there is some stuff I've been happy to see: many people have translated the code in the book to other programming languages, and several have done video series' about the book.