Is it legal to write a pastiche?
If so then can we use images from other tintin books/movies/episodes?
Moderator Note: This is a much discussed area on the forums, so a search on topics suchs
fan art or
fan work would be a place to start, rather than drag it all out again.
Broadly speaking (and we are not lawyers) it is legal to
write/ draw whatever you like (provided that that doesn't breach some other law of course); it is
publishing it which is the problem - that is, distributing it or making it available for others to see by some means, so not just printing it up or photocopying, but putting it on the internet too. It doesn't matter if you are making money, giving it away or whatever, that's not relevant.
Putting a disclaimer on it (e.g. "No breach of copyright intended") has no value either, as it isn't what you intend that counts, it's what you've done that is the issue.
Copying images from elsewhere without permission would be frowned on anyway (you're not really "writing" at that point, you are just re-purposing someone else's work), unless you gained the permission of whoever owns the rights (interestingly Moulinsart not only don't allow original images to be combined by others to create "new" works, they don't do this themselves, nor do they place separate frames together if that was not how they originally were).
Moulinsart have published a
charter which concerns the use of Hergé's work on the Internet**. Please read it.
To quote from the charter:
Copyright protects not only the comic albums and the drawings (cases, strips, plates, extra-textual drawings, covers), script ("scenario"), texts, dialogues and gags, but also the settings, the characters and their particularities, the names, titles and imaginary places, onomatopoeia, fonts and other elements of the work of Hergé.]
We are not responsible for this, but we broadly agree with the principle of protecting copyright, if only because many of our members derive their living from being creative and producing their own copyright protected works.
As we have existing threads to cover all this, this new one will be locked.
The Tintinologist Team** = English-language version charter no longer exists; the French version can be found at
http://www.tintin.com/home/legal/droits.html (Posted by Admin. 05 Jan 2015)
