Congrats to everyone who’s ever written something and posted it on AO3 on your Hugo Award nomination.
(The entirety of AO3 was nominated in the “Related Works” category, so technically everyone who’s contributed to the Archive is a nominee.)
Kudos to everyone who has ever provided Hits and/or Kudos, shared their fan creativity or otherwise supported the Org – and personalized kudos for my cohorts on the Legal Committee @transformativeworks.
(via cacchieressa)
Congrats to transformativeworks for absolutely crushing it at the 1201 DMCA hearings, and also for the greatest use of a Supernatural fan-vid in a government setting.
EVERYONE STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING RIGHT NOW AND READ THIS BECAUSE HOLY SHIT MY WHOLE LIFE JUST CHANGED FOR THE BETTER.
So apparently in addition to running Archive of Our Own and providing legal advocacy to fans who run up against plagiarism accusations, the Organization for Transformative Works also publishes a peer-reviewed academic journal called Transformative Works and Cultures that is dedicated to promoting scholarship about fanworks and practices. This journal is 100% free to access and has been publishing 2-3 volumes (each containing 15-18 articles, essays, interviews, and book reviews) per year since 2008.
Why is this so fucking exciting? For one thing, academia has a terrible habit of being increeeedibly sloooow to discuss new ideas — partly due to the very long turnaround time necessary to get articles published. By contrast, Transformative Works and Cultures is super up-to-date and teaming with topics that are actually relevant to modern fandom.
Want to read an academic article about female fans being “fridged” in comic book culture? Done. Interested in learning about the societal implications of mpreg within fanfiction/fanart? Here you go. Want to learn more about race and ethnicity in fandom? Well, would you look at that. Feel a mighty need to read a specially-conducted interview with Orlando Jones about producer/fan interactions in “Sleepy Hollow”? Holy butts the show only came out in 2013 and they already have this what the hell.
And all of this — all of the knowledge, all of the analysis, all of the academic credibility being added to fannish ideas — is 100% free to access.
Transformative Works and Cultures is doing fandom an incredible service: by giving a voice to people within fandom, by preserving the discussions and ideas that were important to fannish culture at certain points in time, by emphasizing our significance as a subculture — and all the while doing it on our own terms.
These are fans working hard to give legitimacy to other fans, and if you don’t think that’s rad as hell then I don’t even know what to tell you.
Probably all my followers know this, but in case you don’t: ANYONE can get an account on AO3. You don’t have to be a writer, artist, or other fanart creator. All you have to do is request an invite, and currently I believe the wait is something like 24 hours.
Reasons to get an account:
- You can see all the fic that’s locked to members only! Especially important for sports fandoms where lots of people lock their fic for RPF reasons.
- You can comment on fics that are locked or have anon commenting turned off.
- You can use AO3’s bookmark function (which some people use as a rec function, for example)
- You can turn on the history function, which then keeps track of EVERY FIC YOU EVER CLICK ON
AO3! Accounts are for everyone! \o/
FYI, all.
(via fannishtalk)
Just wanna let any AO3 authors out there know that instead of deleting all of your work, you also have the option of Orphaning your fanfics. The fic is removed from your library and any association the fic has to you is completely wiped from all chapters and comments, while allowing the fanfic as a whole to still be enjoyed by the community.
Question that might be better answered by fyeahcopyright… what would happen to the IP on orphaned works on AO3?
I’m not speaking for the AO3 here, but the Orphaning process only involves removing any publicly visible link between a work and any author. As the language on the page says, “you are giving up control over the work, including the ability to edit or delete it.” You aren’t giving up ownership - and now that it’s been mentioned, I’m going to suggest tha tthe language be changed to read “you are giving up control over the work, including the ability to edit or delete the file that remains archived on the AO3” as that clarifies the situation a little more precisely.
You still own the copyright in the work; you should screencap the editing page before you orphan it if you think you’re ever going to need a datestamp of when it was uploaded, and definitely keep copies on your hard drive and in an account on the cloud that you control and/or your email account, because there’s no guarantee another Megaupload lock-out will happen somewhere, but merely Orphaning a work and making it anonymous/pseudonymous on one site doesn’t impact the copyright if you have other ways to prove yourself the owner, if you ever need to.
(via fourlittlebees-blog)
The OTW’s Legal Advocacy project has stood up for fans’ rights to create and share, helping individual fans with legal questions and making fans’ collective voices heard in court cases.
Recently, our Legal Committee asked for fans to help by providing either media stories or personal stories of takedown requests and actions that have made fans hesitant to create or share fanworks.
Your help is needed again! The U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) are seeking public comments on copyright policy issues, including the legal framework for the creation of remixes. The window for these submissions is short — they must be in by October 14, so we need to act now.
The Legal Committee is thus looking for stories of how fandom has helped fans in day-to-day life. We need you to share your individual stories with concrete examples. For example, perhaps being in fandom has helped you to learn a language, helped you in school, or helped you improve skills that you use elsewhere — skills such as writing, video editing, coding websites, audio editing, or anything else. We don’t need personal information from you, but the more specific the story, the better.
Our attorneys will use your stories to explain to these agencies, which are likely to propose new legislation about copyright, why any change in copyright law should favor freedom to make transformative works. We succeeded before with the DMCA remix exemptions, but only because we were able to share specific stories from vidders. Now we need stories of all kinds.
We also need them soon! Please provide us with your stories by October 10, as our team needs time to work with them before the submission deadline of the 14th.
To submit your story, please use the Legal Committee’s contact form.
And if the OTW’s legal advocacy work is important to you, please consider making a donation to support our ongoing efforts. Thank you!
The government may be shut down, but the PTO is open and seeking comments on copyright policy issues! Tell your fandom story (this week, please!) and help the OTW show how transformative works are creative, magical and protectable as fair use.