Fandom Law Discussed Here
in our COFFEE SHOP AU where everyone's interested in copyright & trademark law, fandom law, privacy and social media issues. Basically Snopes for IP and fan-creativity issues. Created and maintained by fandom lawyer/Board Certified Specialist in Intellectual Property Law Heidi Tandy aka travelingheidi/heidi8 with Hannah aka hllangel and other guestbloggers. Nothing we post here is legal advice.
Ask us anything (but we won't give legal advice)
July 31, 2022
Anonymous asked:
Is anyone else concerned with the growing monetization of fandom?
Actually, internet activists are pretty worried about the corporatization of the internet in general, not just of fandom.
All of the oldschool DIY subcultures are facing similar pressures, both from people who want to co-opt them and from desperate people who need to gig-ify their whole lives to get by.
I can’t make other people’s choices for them, but we can build sites and communities that resist this kind of thing. AO3 is one, and it destroyed any potential market for a for-profit fic archive.
I would just like to take a second to thank every single fanfiction writer who’s ever published a fic. In the last 3 weeks, I’ve read over 890,000 words of fanfiction while in quarantine. I know legally, fanfiction writers are not considered “essential” but let me tell you: they are essential to me. Essential to my sanity, my wellbeing, my happiness. Fic gives me so much joy and such a love for the world and the people in it, and fic writers don’t ask for anything in return, except occasional engagement. So from the bottom of my heart: thank you fic writers. Thank you for keeping me company during this time of isolation. Thank you for writing stories that give me hope and take my mind off of my anxiety. Thank you for making me laugh even when I don’t think it’s possible. Thank you for giving me something to be excited about when it feels like the world is falling apart around me. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
2020 law school grads & NY transplants who were planning to take the July 2020 bar exam….This may or may not be the news you were hoping to hear. New York will not administer a bar exam in July. The exam will be administered in the Fall (dates TBA).
While complications and tragedies are taking place around the world in these days of Corona, courts are still releasing rulings in cases that they’ve been hearing and evaluating over the past year.
On March 24, the 9th Circuit issued a ruling in a fair use case involving Olivia Newton-John’s Magic (from the Xanadu soundtrack) where the court (which covers California) held that the use of Magic in a medley by a high school show choir was fair use because of the limited and transformative nature of the use of a portion of the song.
This ruling has the potential to have a positive impact on fair use evaluations by educators, schools and even media who are creating content for students of all ages to use remotely, in part because of this language in the ruling:
the defense of fair use, if applicable, should cover “teaching”
whether in a private or public setting
The ruling literally summarizes the plot of Xanadu* and then notes that:
“Rainmaker” is an entirely different theatrical work—a
show piece for the high school choir that reworks pieces
from multiple songs to tell a story with new expressive
content and meaning.
To wit, a transformative work. As explained in Nimmer on Copyright, “if, regardless of
medium, defendant’s work performs a different function
from plaintiff’s, then notwithstanding its use of substantially
similar material, the defense of fair use may prevail.”
The Ninth Circuit also awarded attorneys’ fees to the defendants in this matter, stating:
Awarding Defendants their attorneys’ fees insures that
they are properly compensated for defending against
overreaching claims of copyright infringement and pressing
a defense that benefits those educating our youth. An award
of attorneys’ fees here assures that “an overzealous
monopolist [cannot] use his copyright to stamp out the very
creativity that the [Copyright] Act seeks to ignite,” SOFA
Entm’t, 709 F.3d at 1278, allowing for greater breathing
room for classroom educators and those involved in similar
educational extracurricular activities.
This aspect of the ruling is very important to educators and those who manage educational extracurricular activities (possible even those not tied to a specific school or school district), because it recognizes that Fair Use is a vital part of educational activities – in the classroom, on weekends and after hours – and that there is no monopoly of control that copyright-holders manifest.
* Which is clearly a very important and impactful film, according to Heidi
Signal boost: Are you or do you know someone who knows about mechanical parts engineering or 3D printing? A hospital in Italy had ventilator valves breaking. A local business brought in a 3D printer to make new valves and replace the broken ones. They worked. The valve manufacturers were not happy. (Story link: https://www.3dprintingmedia.network/covid-19-3d-printed-valve-for-reanimation-device/)
Now a group has formed to work on medical devices such as open source ventilators to help the fight against Covid-19. The goal is to develop solutions that can quickly and easily be produced and assembled locally worldwide. If you have skills you think may help, please go to https://www.projectopenair.org/
I know discourse is the word of choice in fandom nowadays but I kind of wish we would have stuck with “fandom wank” because it carries the implication that the anger involved culminated into effectively nothing and that the act was wholeheartedly masturbatory in nature rather than for any greater cause.
I saw this post about an hour after I saw a post that said, essentially, “There should be a word for that thing where [exactly describes ‘squeeing’].”
I feel like the time has come to produce something like this:
Squee: The noise you make when something is so good that all you can really do is squeak or squeal. A high pitched sound of delight, often accomanied by hugging yourself or others.
Squick: A fic/art/concept/topic that is repellent to you, so you reject association with it and instead retreat to your personal comfortable spaces- all the while remembering that someone else’s comfort is not your own.
YKINMKATO: Also called “kink tomato.” Abbreviation meaning “your kink is not my kink, and that’s okay.” Used to explain why you are rejecting art or fic brought to you by someone else. A solid mantra to recall instead of sending flames in people’s comments
Flames: The comment equivalent of anon hate.
AMV: “animated music video” or “anime music video.” Often, this is stylized to fit a specific fandom, such as a “PMV” (pony music video) in my little pony. May also be referred to as a lyricstuck.
Filk: Combination of the words “film” and “folk,” this is a music genre, to which “fan songs” and “fan parody covers” belong. If you don’t really understand what this means, take a quick listen to American Pie, then compare Weird Al Yankovic’s Saga Begins
BNF: Big name fan. You know that one person who is just so fuckign popular in your fandom? Their art is always on your dash, everyone knows their fics? Being spoken to directly by them is basically being noticed by everyone ever’s senpai? That’s what these people are called.
DL:DR; Not unliked the teal deer (tl;dr, or “too long, didn’t read”), DLDR means “don’t like? Don’t read!” It’s a reminder that you are under no obligation, ever, to expose yourself to uncomfortable (or, squicky), or potentially harmful (or, triggering), material. Not ever. If you don’t actively like something? It’s not worth your time. Skip it.
Gen: or “genfic” “genart” etc. Fan works which contain no or very little romantic content. Often these are styled after the canon material, and may be called “episodic” ro “slice of life” in addition.
Lemon: Work containing strong pornographic elements
Lime, or Citrus: Work containing mild or implicit pornographic elements
Sockpuppeting: The surprisingly common scenario of someone making a bunch of fake accounts/sideblogs to send themselves reviews or hate, to try to increase views or drama surrounding a work. The accounts they make are called Sockpuppets.
WAFF: Warm and fluffy feelings. A genre of fic that exists just to be therapeutically sweet. Nowadays, usually just called “fluffy.”
Schmoop: Take WAFF and somehow make it even more syrupy. You’ll know it when you see it.
Whump: Imagine if you will, a hurt-comfort fic. The comfort might be considered WAFF. The hurt? That’s the whump.
Wapanese: When white autors pepper their anime fanfic with random, tonally inappropriate japanese words.
Anthropomorfic: Nowadays we just call these “humanstuck” or “humanized AU.”
Wank: Wildly disproportionate drama that crops up because someone wrote/drew/did something that someone else didn’t like. Seriously, I cannot begin to express the fiascos that have come about from all this. Just… Just go look at this.
Plot bunny: Story ideas that you probably won’t ever actually deal with, but that multiply entirely out of control, creating huge worlds in your head that you’re probably not going to write. But hey! You might! And until then they make great sideblogs/askblogs/tumblr posts.
Casefic: Fanfics that try to create an episode-like feel for procedural and crime dramas, moster of the week shows, etc.
Jossed: When popular fan theories and fanon are addressed in the canon of a series, and whoops, turns out we were all very, very wrong.
Kripked: When popular fan theories and fanon are addressed in the canon of a show and, hot damn, we fucking called it.
Secret Masters: The people who run the websites/ communities/etc that we all do our fanning on. Less relevant now that we have things like tumblr, but when everyone had to run their own archival and social sites for each fandom, it was more important to pay our respects to the strange and powerful beings that brought us all together and gave us our fannish homes. Think the staff of AO3, for example.
Bashing: When a writer purposefully writes a specific character as a horrible, horrible person so that they can throw them out of the storyline, usually to allow their OTP to get together without trouble. Distinct from fridging in that it doesn’t require the character to die, but rather to be such a screaming harpy that they get rightfully removed from the main characters’ lives for being an abusive hell beast. Generally, a type of character hate. Be wary of people who bash women, queer people, and POC with consistency: they are not safe to be around.
‘Squick’ also has an alternate horrible meaning for Harry Potter fans who were in fandom a while back. Dear god.
Drabble: A fic that is EXACTLY 100 words. Often used as a creative exercise in telling a story in a very small constraint.
Ficlet: Fic that clocks in somewhere between 100 to 2.5K words.
Crossover: A piece of media in which two or more source materials are treated as the same universe. Characters from Fandom A can meet characters from Fandom B. (The Doctor Goes To Hogwarts And Meet Harry Potter!)
Fusion: A fusion takes the characters of one source material and *surplants* them into another universe entirely. Characters from Fandom A cannot meet characters from Fandom B. (Dave Strider is part of an Inception team!)
TPTB: The Powers That Be. Almost always redundantly referred to as “the TPTB.” A collective term for showrunners, actors, producers, writers, et al, anyone who is part of the team that creates the source material.
YMMV: Your Mileage May Vary. A shorthand way of saying “this is how I see it/have experienced it though I realize others might have a different perspective.”
Tinhatting: Often used in RPF fandoms, the situation where some fans are convinced two celebrities are in a relationship but its being kept a secret.
Join us at San Diego Comic Con for the annual Harry Potter Fandom Panel, Thursday night from 830 til 930 (and we’re in the same room as the Cursed Child Magic panel, though there’s a cool Aliens panel in the same room between the two).
This year’s panelists include reps from @mugglenet, @elhofferdesign, @fansplaining, Puffs the Play, @usquidditch, LA Dumbledore’s Army, and the Potterhead Running Club, as well as Janina Scarlet, author of Harry Potter Therapy, and Ali Wilgus, creator of the classic HP fansite Diagon Alley.
