FYeahCopyright

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.

[ao3commentoftheday]

what happens to your fic after you die?

It depends. Like anything else on the internet, it could just sit on the Archive forever.

But if you want something more than that, then you might want to look into a Fannish Next of Kin (FNOK). This is a person you choose to get control of your account if you’re ever incapacitated or if you die. 

How do you choose them? They can be a real life friend or family member. They can be someone you know in fandom. Whoever it is, it should be someone you trust because they’ll be given access to your account in the event of your death. You’ll need to be able to talk to them about how you feel about your fanworks and what you want to have happen to them. Do you want them to stand just as they are? Do you want them added to the orphan_account? Do you want your entire account deleted?

After you have chosen your FNOK, both you and your chosen person will need to send a message to the Abuse team - they’re the team who also manage next of kin requests. Both of you will need an AO3 account in order to do this, so if the person you choose isn’t involved in fandom they’ll need to get an account first.

You don’t have to be next of kin for each other. It’s fine if the relationship is just one way. But, you can only have one next of kin. If there are 2 or more, there is the possibility of disagreements about what you want done, and AO3 has no way to arbitrate those disagreements.

You can end the agreement if you want to. If you have a falling out with your friend, or if they leave fandom and you lose touch, or if you want to end this part of the relationship for any reason, either one of you can send another message to the Abuse team and provide both usernames of the people involved. They’ll send you both a message to let you know the FNOK relationship has ended. 

How does AO3 know you’re dead? Your FNOK will tell them by submitting another report to the Abuse team. The Abuse team will then send an email to the address they have on file. If you don’t reply back within 10 days, they’ll pass control of your account over to your FNOK. It is important that you keep your AO3 account email up to date so you don’t miss this message. Remember that AO3 doesn’t know your real life identity, so if the person you trust says you’ve passed and you don’t tell AO3 that you haven’t, then they’ll believe them.

If your account is transferred but you’re still alive, submit a form to the Abuse team and let them know! They’ll do their best to get your account back to you.

You can read these and more details about Fannish Next of Kin over at the AO3 Terms of Service FAQ. Live long and prosper - and plan for the future 🖖

[newyorkthegoldenage]

[fyeahcopyright]

A guest post from Feeding the Elephant: A Forum for Scholarly Communications. Guest post by Greg Cram, associate general counsel and directo

The New York Public Library System is trying to close the "black hole in the cultural and scholarly record is harming the progress of knowledge, especially as researchers increasingly move online to conduct their research". They are collaborating with the Author's Guild, University of Michigan Press, University of South Carolina Press, University of Massachusetts Press, and MIT Press -- and Google will be doing the scanning -- to take scholarly works that are out of print, and allow them to "emerge from scholarly invisibility. They will be discoverable and usable by a global audience of readers and researchers even if their level of use would never ascend to a point at which their publisher would choose to put the work back into print."

More at the link -- and more things for us to read and research in the coming year(s).

[fyeahcopyright]

“Do Notte Buye Betamacks.”

—

Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett wrote that classic line in Good Omens in the late 1980s, when Sony’s Betamax video tape system was already known to be a commercial failure. While it was the first viable at-home video recording system, it had been largely supplanted by VHS videotapes because of their longer recording time and lower cost (although they had a slightly lower quality image as well). 

But there was one area where Betamax was never supplanted by the VHS tape and player manufacturers, and that was in the US Supreme Court. On January 17, 1984, the Court issued its ruling in Sony vs Universal, the case that gave device manufacturers the right to invent, make and sell products that could be used to infringe on copyrights, as long as there was also a significant non-infringing purpose in/regarding the device.

When the Justices first discussed the case, only one of them thought that it was legally permissible for an individual or family to make a single copy of a tv show at home. Just think for a moment of what our world would look like if the Court had ruled the other way - at a minimum, cassette tapes would have been taxed or sold with a license fee on behalf of the songwriters’ publishers, recordable DVDs and the devices that record on them would probably have never existed, and it’s not even clear whether home computers would have developed the way they did; Congress certainly would have regulated the Internet differently in the mid-90s. 

As the EFF wrote in 2005, had the case gone the other way, would innovators have been 

forced by copyright law to ask permission from entertainment moguls before building new technologies? If Sony had asked permission from Hollywood, the Betamax might never have made it to market (or might have had very different features). It’s thanks to the Betamax ruling that the makers of VCRs and every other technology capable of infringing and non-infringing uses (e.g., personal computers, CD burners, the TiVo DVR, Apple’s iPod, and Web browsers) can continue to sell their wares without fear of lawsuits from copyright owners.

Fred Von Lohmann, now with Google’s GC office, wrote this ten years ago - before YouTube (and even gmail) even existed:

New technologies make copyrights more valuable because they unleash new markets and business models. That’s been the rule, without exception, for a century. The VCR ended up making Hollywood rich, with sales of pre-recorded cassettes quickly eclipsing the receipts from box office ticket sales. There’s no reason to think that the Internet won't create even more revenue-generating opportunities.

Every new technology that’s accepted by the mass market impacts all the markets that already exist. Von Lohmann mentioned the publishing industry and scanners in that article ten years ago - and scanners are what made the entire Google Books ruling possible last fall, which in turn expanded the definition and tests regarding Fair Use of all types. 

Every new technology that’s accepted by the mass market changes how we interact with stories, and often, it changes (and expands) copyright law, too.

So no, do notte buy Betamacks (in 1980) if you’re interested in a lower-priced way to record tv shows for two hours before switching tapes. 

Do buy into Betamax’s argument from thirty years ago that a single copy of a copyright-protected work does not infringe. Do buy into Betamax’s argument that single copies and library-building are both Fair Use. Do buy into the Supreme Court’s ruling that inventors and users cannot be liable for infringement for creating, distributing or using a device, program or item that is capable of non-infringing uses. 

Do record something today - likely on digital media - to mark the fact that you can do so, legally. 

[fyeahcopyright]

Happy 40th Anniversary to the case that underpins Fair Use, technology & the Internet.

[literallyaflame]

“fanfiction,” as a concept, only exists because of intellectual property. at the end of the day, it’s just fiction. some of it is great, some of it sucks ass. sometimes, it can reveal something damning about the author—prejudices, biases, whether or not they think cats should be left indoors, how they feel about offshore tax evasion, whatever. that’s the nature of fiction. this is not news to anyone who’s ever opened a book

what’s truly unique about fanfiction is that it’s anonymous and free with a barrier to entry that ants wouldn’t notice climbing. also, it’s amateur by necessity; barring a few notable exceptions, nobody expects their gaudy slash fiction to win them an award or make them a million dollars. this crock pot of internet fuckery lends itself to two things—a monumental diversity of skill level and buck wild nasty behavior

fanfiction is neither god’s gift to all man kind nor an incurable blight. it’s just a thing. that exists. it’s neither defenseless nor indefensible. it can be harmful, helpful, or benign. more importantly, it’s not going anywhere, so i wish we’d stop arguing about whether or not it’s “legitimate” and talk about what’s actually happening with it instead

[fyeahcopyright]

Mickey art by @foxestacado; Magic Kingdom photo by @heidi8.

I took my first Copyright Law class in 1993; just after the term concluded, certain motion pictures had their copyrights restored because of NAFTA, but the copyright terms for things like the Marx Bros' Animal Crackers, and yes, the original Mickey Mouse cartoons including Steamboat Willie and Plane Crazy were supposed to expire by the early 2000s, free for use by anyone, for any purpose (other than trademark infringement).

As we all know, they did not; the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act stretched the term from 75 years to 95 years after first publication, keeping the public domain closed for 20 years -- but those 95 years expire at midnight on January 1, 2024 for Steamboat Willie -- as well as Virginia Woolf's Orlando, the picture book Millions of Cats, a few of my favorite songs from Burt Kalmar & Harry Ruby, and the first sound recording of "Yes! We Have No Bananas!"

What does this mean for creativity? It's unpredictable! Will there be more productions of Threepenny Opera? Stage musical versions of Animal Crackers -- or Marx Bros VR? More tiktoks and YouTube videos set to songs our great grandparents enjoyed, now that the sea shanty trend is over? Will there be horror movie versions of early Mickey cartoons, the way some indie filmmakers did a horror movie version of Winnie the Pooh when the first Milne book went into the public domain a few years ago? Will there be a sequel to that horror film featuring Tigger now that His Bounciness is entering the public domain? Will I do a video setting Mickey to "Mack the Knife"? Perhaps!

But I and everyone else needs to remember that Disney still holds trademark rights in Mickey Mouse -- the original version and the evolutions since -- so it'll be important to include a disclaimer or notice that any follow-on work based on things in the public domain is not owned, created or distributed by Disney or the other relevant brand-owner.

What will I be doing to mark the occasion? I'm planning on celebrating the public domain moment *at* Walt Disney World; I need to feel it in my soul; I expect fireworks, and absolutely no recognition from anyone other than me (and possibly my family who tolerate my ridiculousness on this) about the momentousness of the moment. I may livestream it.

I've been waiting for this moment for thirty years, and I can't believe I finally get to celebrate it this week! Creativity is magic, and it'll be fascinating to see what happens next!

[hromantics]

Taylor @ the Chiefs game today! (12/25/23)

[fyeahcopyright]

I just love this imagery.

[olderthannetfic]

You keep talking about the origins of AO3 as this group effort by an actual group of people who were friends and who spent time discussing this with each other in person. It's kind of blowing my mind. Is there a post or a journal somewhere that specifically keeps record of this?

--

I'm dying.

Nonnie, seriously?

No, that's mean, I know you're serious. It's just flabbergasting how much fandom has expanded and how much there isn't a direct link to the past.

Astolat and Cesperanza floated the idea at Vividcon and various places, I think, though I wasn't going to cons in that era. We were all on LJ in those days, and Astolat made a big post nailing her theses to the door. Discussion in the comments was instant and prolonged.

A LJ com was set up to discuss. It was later renamed to otw_news, but if you go all the way back to the beginning, you can see brainstorming mess instead of official news posts.

Fanlore page linking to Astolat's post and giving a little context.

Early brainstorming: https://otw-news.livejournal.com/2007/05/

For example, here I am collecting links to older archives to look at for research when designing AO3.

Fun fact, we never intended to call it AO3. There was a whole call for name suggestions, but nothing was as evocative as astolat's original post title referencing Virginia Woolf. (For those who haven't thought about it, AO3's name is a reference to A Room of One's Own.)

Here's the name discussion

Here's the poll that came out of it

But also notice how many people voted: 562.

That's how many people cared at the time: a few hundred. Maybe a thousand if you count lurkers, but frankly, that community was not as lurkery as now. It wasn't just ten friends. It was a community effort. But what "our" community looked like at the time was vastly different. It was six degrees of Kevin Bacon astolat, not a vast sea of strangers like fic fandom on AO3 is now.

Here's an early post suggesting we ban the under 18s from the site entirely. Pity we didn't do so, given the rise of antis.

Here's the invite to a fundraising party at astolat's in NYC that following Halloween. I dressed as Amanda from Highlander, not very well.

You can tell we knew each other by looking at those comments on astolat's initial post. You can also tell how discussion-based that part of fandom was back in 2007.

The way my tumblr is now with a ton of text, back and forth, and hopping around between threads of conversation, all featuring a consistent set of faces, is very much like LJ. Most of tumblr is not.

[tzikeh]

This is important info to put out there, and I constantly forget that "fandom" as it is now is nothing like the community we had then. This is a good resource for understanding what was going on with the creation of AO3 in particular, but it's also a great example of why older fans say that we miss the Livejournal era of fandom so much.

AO3 is the result of long discussions, hard work, and a dedicated community of fans. Though it isn't is a social media site (and it was never intended to be), it is the only place now that sometimes feels like how the fannish community used to be on LJ--when a good discussion gets going in the comments on a story. But AO3 is for fanfiction et al, and therefore is limited in discussion subjects.

(The ads you'll encounter if you follow those links, though? Did not exist when we were there and were one of the reasons we abandoned the site--not the most important reasons by a long shot as you'll understand if you read more about why AO3 was created, but they were a factor.)

We were a collection of communities, with some-to-significant overlap in members. Fanfiction writers were not "content creators," and people who didn't write fanfiction were not "the lucky audience who should be soooooooooooo grateful that writers deigned to gift us with their incredible talent." We knew each other. Many of us met each other IRL after meeting through fandom (once fandom shifted to the internet there was some hesitancy at first about meeting "online" friends, but that was quickly gotten over). We went to conventions together. We had lunch and dinner and parties and meet-ups IRL outside of conventions.

If you take a wander around from even just that one LJ community (click on a username to check out their personal LJ), you can see how discussions would branch off without excluding anyone the way they do on Tumblr. If you wanted to share something you saw on someone else's LJ, you just linked to it, and people followed the link to read it and join in the discussion (or just lurk). The force of Tumblr splintering is an active barrier to creating real communities.

I really miss LJ. I miss the connection I felt to my community there.

[olderthannetfic]

#fandom is supposed to be a community -- not a two-tiered system of sellers and buyers

Yup.

[fyeahcopyright]

Flashback time. I (heidi) came on board in July, 2007; in May of 2007, LJ's then-owners, SixApart, banned a number of fanfic communities including Pornish Pixies, which played a role in some of the discussions about having a site where there would be ownership of the servers, so fandom wouldn't be at the mercy of third parties who changed policies with some capriciousness and, occasionally, less notice.

Now I (heidi) enjoy that my kids (who are now all now young adults) read and post on AO3, and that they won't tell me what their usernames are.

[deadmomjokes]

PSA: tomatoes are not spicy. Tomatoes and tomato products should not be spicy. Pizza sauce isn’t inherently spicy. Tomato-based pasta sauce is not spicy. Ketchup is NOT spicy.

If tomatoes are spicy, you have an allergy to tomatoes.

This announcement brought to you by my almost 29-year-old husband learning for the first time in his 2.8 decades of putting food products into his mouth that spaghetti and saucy pizza aren’t spicy foods

[deadmomjokes]

Seeing the tags on this as it’s going around again, so I have returned to say a few things:

If your mouth hurts, feels raw, or itches when you eat something, please don’t eat it! It might not be a full-blown allergy, could be something like a sensitivity to the acid content or maybe even Oral Allergy Syndrome, but also, you might very well be allergic. Unless it’s explicitly designed to be sour or spicy, it’s not supposed to do that.

Bananas are not spicy, prickly, or tingly! Kiwi is not unbearably sour and tingly! You people probably have an allergy! Stop eating the death fruits!

Mango and pineapple are a little odd. A lot of people react to pineapple because of an enzyme it contains which breaks down proteins; depending on your sensitivity level, it can make it feel like your mouth is being dissolved, because that’s kind of maybe what’s happening? You might not have a full-blown systemic allergy, but if it hurts, listen to your mouth and respect its stopping point. Mango has a compound super similar to urushiol, which is the stuff in poison ivy. A lot of people get oral allergy symptoms with fresh mango. Again, not necessarily a systemic allergy, but also, your body doesn’t like that. Please listen to your body.

Honey is not naturally spicy, sour, or tingly. (Spicy and infused honeys do exist, but I’m talking plain honey.) It might be a bit rich/overly sweet, but no, it should not make your tongue funny, ‘prickle,’ or otherwise hurt your mouth. You are probably allergic to honey. (insert “ghost bees” post here lol)

Many peppers are spicy, but bell peppers are not. Repeat after me: Bell Peppers Are Not Spicy. If they are spicy, you are probably allergic! This is yet another one my husband learned recently. Bell peppers/capsicum are also called sweet peppers, because they are sweet.

On that note, here’s a handy metric: If you find yourself wondering how people just looooove this food, or how they always fail to mention the weird sensory feature about it–primarily the spiciness, ‘fuzziness’ in mouth, or pain it causes–your experience is probably out of the ordinary and could very well be some kind of allergy.

And now, an update on my husband’s journey of allergen discovery, because I’m sensing from the tags and comments this might be relevant to a lot of y’all.

Yes, he is definitely allergic to tomatoes. Went and got him allergy tested to confirm it, and it came back pretty darn high on the list. Along with a crapton of other foods he’d been eating his entire life. We immediately got rid of all of those things in our diet, and wouldn’t you know it, his lifelong “IBS” went away.

So here’s a further PSA.

If you have “IBS” or a “sensitive stomach,” try to get tested for food allergies, too. Not all food allergies send you into anaphylaxis. Sometimes they give you smelly gas, diarrhea, constipation, acid reflux, recurrent tummyaches, nausea, and headaches. And it doesn’t always happen right away, sometimes taking several hours or most of a day to produce the unpleasant results, so you might not be noticing what your specific triggers are.

Also, I see all you people in the tags talking about how you’re gonna eat your allergens anyway. Please don’t do that, unless you’re 100% medically sure it’s just something like a surface sensitivity to enzymes or an oral reaction that’s not actually an allergy. Eating your allergens all the time inflames your whole system, and it can cause a lot of damage that takes a long time to heal. Be kind to your body, friends. You live there.

[bioluminescently-unfolding]

Also, if you realise you’ve been having a reaction to a particular food or ingredient, and you have a history of anaphylaxis, even if it’s only been induced by medication or other non-food substances in the past, please don’t keep eating it to test it or whatever see a doctor particularly soon. They really need to check that stuff out and get it documented in your medical notes.

As OP said, don’t keep re-exposing yourself “to test it”, and if you’re seeing an escalation in the symtpoms you get when you eat it over time, particularly share that info with your doctor.

[fyeahcopyright]

As someone with a mango allergy, ✅⬆️♾️

[joshpeck]

why do you and others like vaccines so much?

not dying of preventable diseases is actually one of my favorite hobbies

[raventheringwraith]

Because smallpox used to kill about 30% of everyone who caught it. The successful vaccine program run by the world’s medical community means that no one will ever die of smallpox ever again.

Because rabies is 100% fatal without a vaccine. No one needs to die of rabies ever again. It is entirely preventable.

Because 1-2 in 1000 who get measles, die. Vaccines let us contain outbreaks or fully wipe them out. There is no specific treatment for the disease once you have it. Your immune system either wins or you die.

We like vaccines because vaccines save lives and raise our standard of living.

[daraoakwise]

My mother, now in her 70s, talks about how her mother wept for joy when her children received the polio vaccine. Because she didn’t have to be afraid of polio anymore.

[raptorchick]

A 2019 study found that measles can cause “immune amnesia”, cutting your antibodies by 10%, up to almost 75%.  Meaning, you’ve become that much more vulnerable to a whole slew of illnesses that you used to be protected from, and it doesn’t matter if you acquired the antibodies via a vaccine or recovering from an illnesses - they are gone.  All those shots you got as a baby?  The boosters you got through grade school and as an adult, including the annual flu shot?  Guess what: measles most likely wiped your body’s immune memory of those and you’ll have to get them all.  Over.  Again.

[fansplaining]

How U.S. Copyright Law Fails Fan Creators — Fansplaining

Fans know that creativity isn’t a finite resource that needs to be kept behind lock and key.

Today we're thrilled to publish our latest article—a piece on U.S copyright law and fandom by @earlgreytea68!

Fan creators don’t speak with one voice any more than any creative community speaks with one voice. I am well aware that I am one of you, but I am definitely not all of you. But most fan creators don’t consider themselves to be lazy or thieves—including me. In fact, all the fan creators that I know work very hard on our creations. We don’t consider ourselves to be stealing anything, because what we “steal”—some characters, some settings—is part of our cultural heritage, part of the world around us, part of the raw material we’ve been given to examine and make sense of our world, the way creators have for millennia.

She'll also discuss the topic on this week's episode, out today for Patrons and tomorrow for everyone else!

[fansplaining]

A reminder that if you're a Patron, you can listen to our conversation with EGT about this right now—and if you're not, consider becoming one at $2 a month to get early access to this and all future episodes. (You'll also support us publishing more articles in the future!)

[elizabethminkel]

I'm so pleased we were able to publish EGT—who is both a prolific fic writer and a lawyer who specializes in copyright & trademark law—on one of my favorite topics. 💞

[evie-carnahan]

Loki 2.01 "Ouroboros"

[fyeahcopyright]

Trademark Law in the MCU

[oneofthosecrazycatladies]

So I’m on AO3 and I see a lot of people who put “I do not own [insert fandom here]” before their story.

Like, I came on this site to read FAN fiction. This is a FAN fiction site. I’m fully aware that you don’t own the fandom or the characters. That’s why it’s called FAN FICTION.

[adiwriting]

Oh you youngins… How quickly they forget.

Back in the day, before fan fiction was mainstream and even encouraged by creators… This was your “please don’t sue me, I’m poor and just here for a good time” plea.

Cause guess what? That shit used to happen.

[ohbeckoh]

how soon they forget ann rice’s lawyers.

[emma-regina4ever]

What happened with her lawyers.

[racethewind10]

History became legend. Legend became myth….  And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost.

[tiger-in-the-flightdeck]

I worked with one of the women that got contacted by Rice’s lawyers. Scared the hell out of her and she never touched fandom again. The first time I saw a commission post on tumblr for fanart, I was shocked.

[demonicae]

One of the reasons I fell out of love with her writing was her treatment of the fans… (that and the opening chapter of Lasher gave me such heebie-jeebies with the whole underage sex thing I felt unclean just reading it.)

I have zero problem with fanart/fic so long as the creators aren’t making money off of it. It is someone else’s intellectual property and people who create fan related works need to respect that (and a solid 98% of them do.)

The remaining 2% are either easily swayed by being gently prompted to not cash in on someone else’s IP. Or they DGAF… and they are the ones who will eventually land themselves in hot water. Either way: this isn’t much of an excuse to persecute your entire fanbase.

But Anne Rice went off the deep end with this stuff by actively attacking people who were expressing their love for her work and were not profiteering from it.

The Vampire Chronicles was a dangerous fandom to be in back in the day. Most of the works I read/saw were hidden away in the dark recesses of the internet and covered by disclaimers (a lot of them reading like thoroughly researched legal documents.)

And woe betide anyone who was into shipping anyone with ANYONE in that fandom. You were most at risk, it seemed, if your vision of the characters deviated from the creators ‘original intentions.’ (Hypocritical of a woman who made most of her living writing erotica.)

Imagine getting sued over a headcanon…

Put simply: we all lived in fear of her team of highly paid lawyers descending from the heavens and taking us to court over a slashfic less than 500 words long.

[pagerunner-j]

all of this

[fanfichasruinedmylife-deactivat]

Reblogging because I can’t believe there are people out there who don’t know the story behind fan fiction disclaimers. 

[hils79]

Yep I used to have disclaimers on all my Buffy fic back in the day. The Buffy creators were mostly pretty chill about fandom but it’s not like it is now. You did NOT talk about fandom with anyone except other fandom people and bringing it up at cons was a massive no no because of stuff like this.

I think Supernatural (and Misha Collins specifically) was when that wall between fandom and creators started to break down. It’s a relatively new thing.

I remember going to a Merlin panel down in London and a girl sitting next to me asked the cast about slash and I thought she was going to get kicked out!

Fandom history is important.

[cracktheglasses]

Oh, this brings back some not so-awesome ‘90s fandom memories! 

[griesly]

Oh man, let me tell you about the X-Files fandom. Lawyers for FOX sued, threatened, and generally terrified the owners of fan websites on a regular basis. God help you if you wrote or created original art set in their (expansive) universe or worse - dared to write about their characters. Even people who weren’t creating fanworks, just hosting Geocities pages about how much people liked the show would be sent C&D orders or actually fined. When I was first discovering the concept, the first rule of fandom was you do not talk about fandom because the consequences could be devastating.

It was such a strange and uncomfortable experience for me when fans in LOTR and Potter fandoms suddenly started shoving their work in people’s faces speaking publicly about fandom and wanting to engage in dialogue with the creators and actors of the Thing they were into. Fan stuff was supposed to stay online, in archives and list-serves and zines we passed around because it just wasn’t cool to talk about it and it could get you in a boatload of trouble. The freedom we have to create and gather together in a shared space, or actually be acknowledged in any way by people outside the fandom was inconceivable to my fannish, teenaged self. I want fans these days to understand how amazing modern fandom really is, cherish the community, and appreciate what it took to get us here. 

[oyveyzqueer]

“if you found this by googling yourself, hit back now. this means you, pete wentz”

[tbqtalks]

Oh hey, even more blasts from the past.

I was one of the ones who got a love letter from Anne Rice’s lawyers. Bear in mind that up until that point her publisher had encouraged fanfic and worked with the archive keeper (one of my roommates at the time) to drum up publicity for upcoming books and so on.

I could tell such tales of how much Anne screwed over her fans back then. The tl;dr version is that she and her peeps would use fan projects as free market research and then bring in the lawyers once it was felt Anne could make money off of it herself. (Talismanic Tours being one of the most offensive examples of this.)

But where fanfic is concerned not only did we get nastygrams but one of my friends had Anne’s lawyer trying to fuck up her own privately owned business which had NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING ANNE RELATED. Said friend was a small business owner with health issues who wasn’t exactly rolling in money, so guess how well that went?

On top of that when yours truly tried to speak out about it I discovered that someone in Anne’s camp had been cyber stalking me to the point where they took all the tiny crumbs of personal information I had posted over the course of five years or so and used it to doxx me (before that was even a term and in early enough days of the WWW that this wasn’t an easy task) and post VERY personal information about me on the main fandom message board of the time. Luckily for me the mod was my friend and she took that down post haste, but it was still oodles of fun feeling that violated and why to this day I am very strict about keeping my fandom and personal lives separate online.

Hence why those of us in the fandom at the time who still gave enough of a shit to want to keep writing fic DID keep writing fic, but shoved it so far underground and slapped it with so many disclaimers they could’ve outweighed the word count of War & Peace. It wasn’t just for the purpose of protecting fic but for trying to protect our personal lives as well.

(Also would love to know who @tiger-in-the-flightdeck knew. Life paths crossing after so many years….)

[dubiousculturalartifact]

Lucasfilm also sent cease-and-desist letters to Star Wars fanzines publishing slash.

My favourite bit I read from one included the idea that you weren’t allowed to have any explicit content, of which anything queer, no matter how tame, was included, to “preserve that innocence even Imperial crew members must be imagined to have”.

Yeah. The same Imperial crew members who helped build the Death Star to commit planetary genocide.

(It’s one reason Sinjir Velus, while I still have some issues with him, feels like such a delicious ‘f*** you’.)

Later on, they were apparently persuaded to ‘allow’ fans to write slash, provided in ‘remained within the nebulous bounds of good taste’.

(On a related note, if I wasn’t quite so attached to my URL, I would 100% change it to ‘Nebulous Bounds’, because that’s just downright catchy)

[thepioden]

Anne McCaffrey had this huge long set of rules about how exactly you were allowed to play in her sandbox. Dragonriders of Pern was my first online fandom, and I was big into the Pern RP scene - and just about every fan-Weyr had a copy of these lists of rules McCaffrey wanted enforced. One of which was ‘no porn’ and another was basically ‘it can’t be gay’ (and for a while ‘no fanfiction posted online’? which??? anyway.)

She relaxed a little as time went on, but still. 

[mikkeneko]

Let’s not forget: the reason AO3 is called ‘Archive of our own’  is because it was created in response to some bullshit that assholes were trying to play with fan creators. Basically (if I remember the fiasco correctly) trying to mine fandom creators for content which they could then use to generate ad profit on their shitty websites. When the series creators objected, the fans tried to pull their content, only to find that the website hoster resisted, claiming their content was all his now.

That wasn’t even all that long ago…

[bebopsisyphus]

fandom history class

[lazaefair]

To this day, *talking* about writing or reading fanfiction - just acknowledging that it exists - to anyone other than people I know are in fandom as well, feels like a dangerous act. The strict separation I maintained between my real life identity, my online identity, and my fandom identity (yes, they were separate, because some of the most vicious and mocking people were fellow nerds) has broken down a bit these days, but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to integrate them as freely as some younger fans do.

[theglintoftherail]

Everybody should know that AO3 is just one project of the Organization for Transformative Works. Their mission is much broader than just hosting a (very good) fanfic site. They do all kinds of fandom history archiving and publish an academic journal, but most importantly, they perform legal advocacy to protect the fair use rights of people who make fanfic or fanart.

The OTW Legal Committee’s mission includes education, assistance, and advocacy.

We create and post educational materials about developments in fandom-related law on transformativeworks.org and on archiveofourown.org.

We assist individual fans when their fanworks are challenged, we answer fans’ questions about law relevant to fanworks, and we help fans find legal representation.

We partner with other advocacy organizations and coalitions in the U.S. and around the world.

We advocate for laws and policies that promote balance and protect fanworks and fandom.

And much more!

I haven’t been involved in fandom stuff all that long, but I find this stuff so fascinating!

[hoenursey]

whew, i feel old, but that’s mostly bc i was on forums way way waaaaay too young. but this? yes. all the way. people had password protected forums on the weirdest, most unconventional websites. before you could even be approved by the mods they would search your blog, your other accounts, question you, everything, all because we were broke teens and preteens trying to do something for fun and if someone got in who could doxx you or send your work over to a lawyer? that was it, you were OVER. that’s also part of where fandom wars and the defense of fandom came from: quote unquote “enemy” fandoms would infiltrate just to hurt you. @theglintoftherail makes a very good point: ao3 is a goddamn haven. and they’re a great team of lawyers and people dedicated to protecting fanworks! part of the reason it’s so great is because they know there’s no one like them out there. they also go to the ends of the damned earth to protect you and to be inclusive, which is why there’s shit like tentacle porn and underage and dubcon. because they’re dedicated to protecting readers and creators to the death. they don’t advocate for it and they have the extensive rating and tagging system because of that (legit the best tagging system i’ve ever seen) but they don’t know if you’re dealing with trauma or if you need to get something out. do not forget your fandom, kids. jesus

[readingrenditions]

Who else knew nothing about this? A show of hands

[yamaccino]

I’m just the right age to remember the disclaimers and to have HEARD about the Anne Rice, Anne McCaffrey, and X-Files fiascos, but I was never in any of those fandoms and I was more or less on the tail end of that. I can’t imagine having to be scared to tell people I write fanfic. So glad we’ve come so far.

[thefriendlypigeon]

Every time I start reading fanfics, I thank all of you people whose neverending resilience and the drive to be creative made it possible for me to consume content freely and without worry 🖤

[threshie]

My older fics have the disclaimers. Heck, my older fanart has disclaimers in the descriptions. FFN and DeviantArt were those times, AO3 and Tumblr era I stopped finally.

[northstarfan]

In case folks still don’t get why losing AO3 would be so devastating…

[bertytravelsfar]

Hey kids? Wanna hear a story about the good old days??????? ☹️

[fyeahcopyright]

In my chapter in FIC, I wrote about how WB asked us at FictionAlley to mark all the slash as rated-R, and we said no. (But that was in 2002 and nobody knew then that Dumbledore was gay. And I’m not sure they discussed this with Joanne before making the request.)

[olderthannetfic]

Is anyone else concerned with the growing monetization of fandom?

--

Approximately 100% of Olds, yes.

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.

Here's an example of the kind of manifesto I'm talking about.

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.

[darlinghogwarts]

what if elle woods from legally blonde had been harry’s lawyer during his hearing in the order of the phoenix

[solstilla]

Elle vs. Umbridge is a fight I’d pay to see

[space-snake]

Good pink vs Bad pink

[emmysmusings]

“You can produce a full patronus?”

“What, like it’s hard?”

[ao3commentoftheday]

[sasstricbypass]

I fucking hate you guys

[misty-anne]

@deadcatwithaflamethrower

[deadcatwithaflamethrower]

I’ve seen this before, because I have it Liked, but I have no memory of this awesome.

Umbridge would end up in a properly pink biodegradable garbage bag. After Elle kicks her ass in court, of course.

[edwardsvirginity]

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. 

[superdames]

Re-posting this because I finally got to scan it in high-res.

Betty Bates is a goddamn hero.

—“Betty Bates, Lady-at-Law” in Hit Comics #47 (1947)