Rogue Archives
“Memory has fallen into the hands of rogues.” Such were the words used by Sarah De Kosnik in her book Rogue Archiveto describe the shift in the preservation of memories from the traditional physical to the avant-garde digital with the explosion of the Internet in the public. As this transmission of digital media increased over the years, cultural memory was no longer bound to the state and government, and instead became a property of the people. This transition marks the birth of rogue archives, which is essentially the digital collection and preservation of documents and records on the internet and outside of copyright restrictions.
There are certain aspects that all rogue archives share as defined by De Kosnik: the material must be available at all times; anyone with an internet connection would be able to access the content; the material can be fully streamed or downloaded for free; the content would most likely never be preserved in a traditional memory archive, such as a museum; the archive, once again, possesses no concern for copyright laws or restrictions. The last point, in regards to copyright, is one of the key differentiators of rogue archives from traditional ones. In fact, one of the main reasons why it is specifically referred to as rogue archives is because of this absence of a care for any laws of copyright protection that institutional internet archives must follow, such as the Walt Whitman Archive.
Perhaps one of the greatest benefits and possibilities of rogue archives is its ability to preserve vast quantities of cultural content and make it available to the public without “selective traditions,” which only seeks to preserve the information and records of the dominant culture, disregarding the various unique subcategories out there. One great example of this possibility in action is essentially what our class is about, fan fiction. Fan fiction archives are one of the most prominent categories of rogue archives. Members of fandoms are able to interact with and alter literally any and all aspects of their favorite stories and series; ranging from the grand fantasy novel series A Song of Ice and Fire from George R. R. Martin to the disturbing twisted manga Berserk from the late Kentaro Miura, the possibilities are endless and only limited to the imagination of the fandom members.
Two of the largest fan fiction digital archives today is Fanfiction.net (FF.net) and Archive of Our Own (AO3), both of which are essentially rogue archives, as members are unrestricted by copyright laws, using characters, settings, plot, dialogue in any way, shape, or form possible. These sites contain thousands of fandoms and their member’s works, including movie, television, novel, anime, comic series and so much more. However, even within fanfic rogue archives, there are differences between each preservation system. One of the largest differences between FF.net and AO3 is that FF.net is for profit while the latter is not. This is significant as FF.net utilized ads to generate revenue, allowing its owners and moderators to place content limitation policies on the site as well as delete stories and users without any notice. This became extremely controversial in the fanfic community as some members would login to their creative works completely gone, while others lost their whole account and catalog. This was what actually led to the creation of AO3 as an alternative that practices zero censorship or deletion. Nevertheless, both digital archives continue to expand drastically throughout the years, reaching the status that they possess today.
Rogue archives are invaluable to today’s internet society and age. Fanfiction is just one of the countless subcultures that rogue archives are able to help collect, record, and preserve through the internet. Without these archives made by everyday people, centuries of information and creative works would have been lost to the sands of time.