Intellectual property

2012 is becoming the year of legislation and legal actions regarding Internet use. Earlier this year, proposed U.S. legislation known as SOPA and PIPA were shelved as a result of public outrage. Other actions were taken around the globe to protest ACTA, an international treaty still veiled in secrecy that also threatened to curtail the general public's activities and usage of online services.

The latest controversial piece of legislation on this front is the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), which was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives on November 30, 2011 and has just been passed. Numerous groups are opposed to the bill such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Library Association, Free Press, and Canadian Internet Policy. The bill is also opposed by various politicans from President Obama to Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul, but is supported by companies such as telecom carriers Verizon, U.S. Telecom, and Sprint, and tech companies such as Facebook, Symantec, IBM and Oracle. The U.S. Senate has its own version of the bill which was previously endorsed by the White House, so it's still unclear in what form the bill may pass the Senate and whether or not that might be signed by President Obama.

The Center for Democracy and Technology, which is opposed to CISPA, lists various problems with the legislation as it's currently drafted:

1) CISPA has a very broad, almost unlimited definition of the information that can be shared with government agencies and it supersedes all other privacy laws.
2) CISPA is likely to lead to expansion of the government’s role in the monitoring of private communications.
3) CISPA is likely to shift control of government cybersecurity efforts from civilian agencies to the military.
4) Once the information is shared with the government, it wouldn’t have to be used for cybersecurity, but could instead be used for other purposes.

Given the Internet's current infrastructure, anything that affects Internet traffic in the U.S. can have implications for Internet freedoms around the globe. While some in the U.S. have decided to protest CISPA by drowning legislators in personal content, those who oppose the bill can also take a more traditional approach.

A more encouraging story about online regulation has come from Australia, where their High Court refused to hold ISPs accountable for illegal downloading done through their services. The AFACT v. iiNet appeal was unanimously dismissed, with the court deciding against the case brought by movie companies including Australian branches of Hollywood studios Universal Pictures, Warner Bros. and 20th Century Fox.

Holding providers liable for content posted or transmitted through their service has been a common tactic by content creators, whether of films or music. During the past week YouTube lost a court case in Germany where it was sued for royalties, and the court decided it "had not done enough to stop copyrighted clips being posted." Such cases are likely to continue around the globe in an effort to stifle consumer posting and transmission of content that music and film industry associations consider to be in violation of their ownership rights.

Here's a roundup of stories on Hunger Games fandom that might be of interest to fans:

• The launch of the Hunger Games film has prompted fan activity to hit the news. A piece in The New York Times focused on the fandom's partnership with Oxfam to fight hunger and suggested that fandom can be a pathway for social activism, mentioning the upcoming issue of Transformative Works and Cultures that explores fan activities on this front. However, while it mentions the need for outside organizations to work with fan-originated groups, the article fails to discuss the fact that fan efforts are supported only if they go through official channels to do so. The Hollywood Reporter posted about the film's distributor, Lionsgate, sending a cease and desist letter to the Harry Potter Alliance's Imagine Better Project--the group featured in the Times' article. Lionsgate cites the Project's website and marketing as "causing damage" to its own efforts, and because Lionsgate had already paired with the United Nations' World Food Programme and Feeding America to pursue similar goals, the company wants fans to work through those two organizations. Though a source close to the studio said that Lionsgate would not pursue legal action, they did threaten a take-down of the fan site. Twilight fans can probably sympathize, as the films' distributor, Summit Entertainment, has been so aggressive in searching out related merchandise that it attempted to remove an artist's work for using the film's release date in her otherwise completely unrelated work.
• Unfortunately, some fans have been effective in squashing the squee of other parts of the Hunger Games fandom, as a post in The Guardian made clear. Says the article's author, "I am a woman of colour with a deep--almost unhealthy--love of popular culture. It is a love that is sorely tested in the face of such prejudice when I am told, loudly and with few qualms, that the stories of people who look like me just aren't viable in a specific universe. It is often explicitly stated by my co-fans that I am not–-ever-–what they picture when they read these books or hear about these movies. The language may be coded: 'She's not how I imagined' or, in the case of interracial couple Sam and Mercedes on TV's Glee, slightly more explicit: 'They don't look right together, like, they don't . . . fit.' But the message is clear. We get to be supporting characters-–the redshirts--or the villains. But heroes? Um, no. That would make things too . . . ethnic."
• A Connecticut high school produced its own version the story: "Teacher Janet Kenny dressed up as Effie Trinket to conduct the reaping and selected the names of one boy and one girl tribute from 'districts'--grades nine through 12. The students, or 'tributes,' then scrambled to collect items from the 'cornucopia' in the middle of the gym. Two months into the games, the tributes competed in games related trivia, fashion, cake decorating, and archery. The lucky winner [received] a pair of tickets to see the film opening weekend."
• A piece in Salon suggests that recent film successes have demonstrated "the awesome cultural power of young readers, especially young girls." Arguing that the film's marketing team can't take credit for fan enthusiasm, writer Laura Miller states "[A] good movie and a canny promotional campaign aren’t enough to make hundreds of people camp out in a tent city to await a movie’s premiere. That kind of enthusiasm only comes from a fandom, an organized, well-networked, convivial mass of people who really, really love something and want to talk about it—a lot." While prior to the film's opening, some coverage suggested that fanboys rather than families would be the core of the film's success, Miller counters this. Referring to a New York Times article that attributed Hunger Games' box office defeat of Breaking Dawn: Part 1 to its larger percentage of male viewers, she writes, "Like the Times, you could look at these figures as an indication of how much better a movie franchise can do when it appeals to young men as well as young women — or you could just acknowledge the fact that a movie can now be a big hit without appealing to young men at all."

If you are a Hunger Games fan why not write about it in Fanlore? Additions are welcome from all fans.

We want your suggestions! If you know of an essay, video, article, event, or link you think we should know about, comment on the most recent Links Roundup — on transformativeworks.org, LJ, or DW — or give @OTW_News a shoutout on Twitter. Links are welcome in all languages!

Submitting a link doesn't guarantee that it will be included in a roundup post, and inclusion of a link doesn't mean that it is endorsed by the OTW.

Here's a roundup of legal issues stories that might be of interest to fans:

• Creators and copyright holders have various different types of engagement with fans, and these sometime end in conflict. A remix of Samuel Jackson's reading of "Go the Fuck to Sleep" posted on YouTube was taken down although the remixer "maintained that his creative works don’t violate copyright, thanks to exemptions in copyright law that allow for “transformative” uses of copyrighted material." And the basketball team the L.A. Clippers recently asked that their most recognizable fan stop using the name Clipper Darrell, which outraged many fans who noticed the team was perfectly happy to allow him the title when the team was doing poorly.
• An actor who briefly appeared in the U.S. show Community's Dr. Who spoof Inspector Spacetime sought fan funding for a six episode web-series based on the character/show premise. "Inspector Spacetime, has developed such a devoted internet following since it first showed up at the beginning of the fall season. So much so that it has its own Tumblr and history, which is as extensive as the show it’s spoofing." However, he recently explained that "Lawyers from Sony and NBC have contacted me demanding that I cease production" but asked that contributions continue. "Richey is now calling the project “Untitled Webseries About a Space Traveler Who Can Also Travel Through Time” but [is] otherwise going ahead as planned."
• The results of copyright struggles remain in debate, with some arguing that piracy is the natural result of producers' actions. Citing a recent study on the effect of the lag in movie release times worldwide and how it had a noticeable effect on the decrease of movie downloading, one blogger asks "If you’re in the U.S., is piracy less of an issue than it used to be depending on the particular media and market? If you’re overseas, do you find that it’s easier to get pirated copies online of things that take months, if ever, to come out where you are?"
• A blogger who posted Fan Fiction: Moral Rights v. Transformative Use cited the OTW's argument that fan fiction is "an act of transformative creation constituting fair use under 17 USC § 107" while examining the case of Diana Gabaldon and George R. R. Martin. He suggests Gabaldon "is trying to build a case...for an author’s moral rights." While the aspect of noncommerciality as a fair use factor is not mentioned, he argues that "much fan fiction originates from a more participatory impulse. Gabaldon and Martin ask why fanfic writers don’t just develop their own characters, or at least appropriate old characters in the public domain (Jane Eyre, for instance), but I think they’re not accounting for this impulse, a desire to participate actively in the culture."
• Copyright holders themselves may have trouble participating in the culture depending on what their work focuses on. PayPal has issued directives to online ebook retailers that is erasing particular forms of erotic content from the marketplace. "Smashwords founder Coker said that the rise of e-books has shifted more power in the book world to payment processors and banks. In the past, readers walked into a physical bookstore and could purchase a book with cash, leaving such companies out of the equation. "Electronic payments have become the oxygen of e-commerce and e-books, so PayPal, banks and credit card companies have enormous power," Coker said. "What right does a financial institution have to censor legal content? Authors are being caught in the middle.""

If you write fan fiction, are a Community, or Inspector Spacetime fan, or you remix content, why not write about it in Fanlore? Additions are welcome from all fans.

We want your suggestions! If you know of an essay, video, article, event, or link you think we should know about, comment on the most recent Links Roundup — on transformativeworks.org, LJ, or DW — or give @OTW_News a shoutout on Twitter. Links are welcome in all languages!

Submitting a link doesn't guarantee that it will be included in a roundup post, and inclusion of a link doesn't mean that it is endorsed by the OTW.

Here's a roundup of stories on the benefits of collective fandom that might be of interest to fans:

• An article targeted at chief information officers cited an Australian study showing that the internet can promote the literacy development of young adults. "Curwood analysed the participation of teenagers in fan-created sites of young adult literature, such as Mockingjay.net, ThePotterGames.net and HungerGamesTrilogy.net. "Young people fall in love with these books and seek out other fans online,” she said. “In their own time they write Hunger Games-inspired fiction, create art, produce videos, compose music, and design role-playing games.""
• Former OTW board member Rachel Barenblat recently wrote about Transformative Work: Midrash and Fanfiction. "Judaism has long been a read/write tradition. We are not expected to be passive recipients of revelation; we are expected to join the conversation." Similarly, "The tradition of derivative works (artistic creations which are rooted in other people’s art) is as old as literature itself. But what makes fanfiction unlike Virgil’s retelling of Homer or Alice Randall’s The Wind Done Gone (which recasts and reframes Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With The Wind) is that fanfiction arises within the context of community."
• The article Excitement builds for pop subculture events throughout the South focused on the positive. "Many conventioneers said attending their first event showed them that, specialized or not, other people shared their interest in niche subjects. The experience, they said, was often revelatory and had a profound impact on them socially." One long-time con-goer concluded "Whatever misconceptions people have, any kind of convention is an opportunity for people to get together and enjoy each other's company."
• Although not solely a fandom issue, back on January 24 we posted about activity surrounding ACTA, an international treaty which has potentially large implications for the current state of copyright and intellectual property enforcement. Over this past weekend, numerous protests took place in Europe to speak out against this treaty, whose negotiations, and indeed exact content, has been kept secret. A German site to protest ACTA counted over 121,000 participants in numerous cities across Germany, and this report of actions in Italy also reveals large turnouts. This site map gives a much clearer view of the range of protest activity, and those interested may want to peruse the numerous videos and photos linked to the protest organization wiki or sign a protest petition. (Thanks to senior_witch for the link collection).

If you are a Hunger Games fan, write fan fiction or attend conventions, why not contribute to Fanlore? Additions are welcome from all fans.

We want your suggestions! If you know of an essay, video, article, event, or link you think we should know about, comment on the most recent Links Roundup — on transformativeworks.org, LJ, or DW — or give @OTW_News a shoutout on Twitter. Links are welcome in all languages!

Submitting a link doesn't guarantee that it will be included in a roundup post, and inclusion of a link doesn't mean that it is endorsed by the OTW.

Here's a roundup of stories on collaborative fan activity that might be of interest to fans:

• Comic Book Movie announced that ""The Batman" will be a FANMADE series released on the internet" and asked for suggestions from fans as to the animated movie's content.
• Soaps.com asks for contributions for fan fiction citing the many stalled storylines of cancelled soap series. "We’ve lost so many of our soap operas in the past few years. Fans are missing the soap characters they’ve grown accustomed to seeing each day over the years. With that in mind, Soaps.com decided to bring your beloved characters, and not so beloved characters back to life via Fan Fiction."
• Unleash the Fanboy announced that a new Star Wars fan film was "groundbreaking" because "a group of Spanish-speaking fanboys made a Star Wars themed flick about two lovers…who happen to be stormtroopers."
• The MarySue posted about how a fan film had topped the annual recommendations made by those in the entertainment industry. "Much like The Black List, the Viewfinder List recognizes short form video content and the up and coming helmers responsible for it.”" The live-action short film, Portal: No Escape, got the most recommendations. "Even if you don’t play the video game it’s based on, it’s a really spectacular thing to watch."
• Lastly, Think Progress took note of collaborative fan action on a different front, that of speaking out against SOPA. "I suspect that as fandom becomes an increasingly important basis for identity or community, we’ll see more work and organizations along these lines where the values that motivate service are drawn less explicitly from political parties or religious faith and more from powerful fictional texts."
  

If you write fan fiction are part of Batman, gaming, or soap opera fandom, or have taken a stand against SOPA, why not contribute your fandom experience to Fanlore? Additions are welcome from all fans.

We want your suggestions! If you know of an essay, video, article, event, or link you think we should know about, comment on the most recent Links Roundup — on transformativeworks.org, LJ, or DW — or give @OTW_News a shoutout on Twitter. Links are welcome in all languages!

Submitting a link doesn't guarantee that it will be included in a roundup post, and inclusion of a link doesn't mean that it is endorsed by the OTW.

In a week following widespread Internet protests against proposed legislation in the U.S., there is an effort going on internationally to protest the potential effects of ACTA. The OTW is concerned about this treaty which has potentially large implications but about which there has been very little information. "In October 2007, the United States, the European Community, Switzerland, and Japan simultaneously announced that they would negotiate a new intellectual property enforcement treaty the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement or ACTA. Australia, the Republic of Korea, New Zealand, Mexico, Jordan, Morocco, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, and Canada have joined the negotiations."

"The main problem with this treaty is that all the negociations are done secretly. Leaked documents show that one of the major goals of the treaty is to force signatory countries into implementing anti file-sharing policies under the form of three-strikes schemes and net filtering practices."

Tell your MEPs and government representatives you want more transparency before this is voted on. Here are some places where you can take action:

• Help sign the Written Declaration about ACTA
• Direct.Gov's UK petition
• Whitehouse.Gov's US petition
• E-petition (Deutsch)
• Suggested guidelines for contacting representatives

Here's a roundup of stories on legal actions that might be of interest to fans:

• Many fans who were not already aware of the proposed SOPA and PIPA bills in the U.S. legislature became aware of them along with much of the rest of the online community after last week's blackout day of protest in which numerous sites, including those of the OTW, either went dark or sported banners in opposition to the bills. Individual fans also blacked out their own sites or, like blogger Serena Wilken at the Huffington Post, wrote about how fandom might suffer if this legislation was enacted.
• Some fans have already been affected by anti-piracy efforts. The Wall Street Journal reported that "The Federal Bureau of Investigation shut down Thursday one of the world's most popular file-sharing websites, MegaUpload.com, and announced the arrest of four of the people behind it in a global crackdown against the suspected online pirates." Online locker services are heavily used by fans engaged in transformative works such as podfic recordings, music videos, collections of artwork, or even single story fan fiction downloads intended for eReaders. The sites targeted by local law enforcement were located in various countries, a demonstration of the international scope of U.S. enforcement efforts.
• Unfortunately, government actions against "piracy" are only part of how fandom may be impacted by legal activity. In a disappointing ruling on January 18, the same day as the Internet blackouts, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that works in the public domain could be put back under copyright. While the change is intended in part to standardize international copyrights, and thus equalize the standing of foreign creators under U.S. law, this change will also affect numerous artists, musicians and other creators utilizing works previously in the public domain.

If you are concerned about copyright or use file sharing services, why not contribute your experiences to Fanlore? Additions are welcome from all fans.

We want your suggestions! If you know of an essay, video, article, event, or link you think we should know about, comment on the most recent Links Roundup — on transformativeworks.org, LJ, or DW — or give @OTW_News a shoutout on Twitter. Links are welcome in all languages!

Submitting a link doesn't guarantee that it will be included in a roundup post, and inclusion of a link doesn't mean that it is endorsed by the OTW.

Here's a roundup of stories on intellectual property issues that might be of interest to fans:

• Last month Crunchyroll.com reported that in a countrywide effort, police in Japan "arrested 30 people on suspicion of using file-sharing software" calling it "the largest simultaneous enforcement by the Japanese police against illegal uploaders ever." Tech entrepreneur Andy Baio concluded that young voters may be key to changing the criminalization of remix culture, and dubbed the current efforts against "piracy" as a new Prohibition. Certainly industries that have a stranglehold on entertainment distribution are able to keep increasing costs to fans and the effects are not limited to the young. A pop music critic writing about the rising cost of rock fandom noted "I’d love to continue the path I’ve been following since early adolescence, when my full membership in the rock-lover’s club began. But I’m just not sure I can afford it anymore."
• The Electronic Frontier Foundation recently filed exemption requests to the DMCA which "asked for legal protections for artists and critics who use excerpts from DVDs or downloading services to create new, remixed works." These exemptions build on and expand exemptions that EFF won last year. "In drafting the requests, EFF had the invaluable assistance of the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Organization for Transformative Works."
• A post at TorrentFreak discovered illegal downloading being done by employees at major studios such as Sony, Universal, and FOX. "We aren’t the only ones to come up with the idea of revealing the BitTorrent habits of copyright advocates. Yesterday, the Dutch blog Geenstijl exposed how someone at the local music royalty collecting agency Buma/Stemra downloaded a copy of the TV-show Entourage and video game Battlefield 3." The company's response suggested that their IP-addresses were spoofed, an unlikely but welcome explanation since "if it’s so easy to spoof an IP-address, then accused file-sharers can use this same defense against copyright holders."
• To those interested in learning more about these issues some recent book reviews noted fans' stake in the discussion. The Times Higher Education in the UK discussed Fan Fiction and Copyright: Outsider Works and Intellectual Property Protection (citing the OTW's Rebecca Tushnet) and The Learned Fangirl reviewed Free Ride: How Digital Parasites are Destroying the Culture Business, and How the Culture Business Can Fight Back.

If you are interested in intellectual property issues such as fair use and the DMCA why not contribute to Fanlore? Additions are welcome from all fans.

We want your suggestions! If you know of an essay, video, article, event, or link you think we should know about, comment on the most recent Links Roundup — on transformativeworks.org, LJ, or DW — or give @OTW_News a shoutout on Twitter. Links are welcome in all languages!

Submitting a link doesn't guarantee that it will be included in a roundup post, and inclusion of a link doesn't mean that it is endorsed by the OTW.

The OTW alerted fans back in October to the introduction of bills in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives that threatened fair use and fan practices on online sites, and later urged fans to make their voices heard regarding this alarming legislation.

There is now information about the OPEN act, an alternative to SOPA. This draft bill not only addresses some of the problems raised by SOPA and the Protect-IP Act, but "the proponents of the Open Act (Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif.) aren't afraid (and, in fact, are anxious) to hear from the many folks who care about the future of the Internet. So, they have opened up the entire law-writing process. Right now, you can go to KeepTheWebOpen.com and read the draft bill for yourself (which we encourage you to do) and make comments and suggestions to improve the draft language."

Besides contributing your input you can also learn more about the differences in the bills from a handy chart on the site, as well as their FAQ.

For those interested in continuing to express opposition to SOPA, the EFF has suggestions on activities for bloggers and artists, as well as continuing to urge people to contact their elected representatives.

Here's a roundup of stories on art and entertainment business models that might be of interest to fans:

• In a series of posts, media scholar Henry Jenkins featured transmedia designer and theorist Brian Clark's discussion about business models for entertainment including "Fan Incubation" and "Fan Funding." "In the past, fan development was slow (for example, the way fan correspondence saved H.P. Lovecraft's works from disappearing) or physical (like the "make record and tour college towns" model of independent musicians like John Vanderslice). The age of the Internet has revolutionized the ability for creators and fans to have rich, meaningful interactions that have led to successes."
• Many fans have embraced the idea of Creative Commons licenses for their work, but as this article points out, its terms are often misunderstood and misused. "Creative Commons has been a force for good on the web, letting people share their work with others and making it easier to let them define the terms of that sharing." However, "what does “noncommercial” mean? Creative Commons isn’t very helpful here. Their definition of “commercial” is “in any manner that is primarily intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation.”...Selling the photo would certainly seem to count as “commercial.” But is using the photo on a web page that also has ads on it — is that commercial?"
• Another post points out "Wired isn’t the only for-profit publisher using noncommercial CC images." Confusion exists over the purpose of a business and the use of a particular work. "[T]he question is whether noncommercial means the same thing as nonprofit. A nonprofit institution can still buy and sell things; a for-profit institution can engage in lots of behavior that isn’t explicitly commercial." As one science photographer pointed out "Creative Commons only functions properly when both content creators and content users have the same understanding of the simplified CC contract." This certainly calls into question how useful YouTube's move in June was to allow users to embed Creative Commons licenses, even beyond the fact that they only enabled one form of the license, which allows commercial re-use of the work.

If you use Creative Commons licenses or are interested in fannish business models, why not contribute to Fanlore? Additions are welcome from all fans.

We want your suggestions! If you know of an essay, video, article, event, or link you think we should know about, comment on the most recent Links Roundup — on transformativeworks.org, LJ, or DW — or give @OTW_News a shoutout on Twitter. Links are welcome in all languages!

Submitting a link doesn't guarantee that it will be included in a roundup post, and inclusion of a link doesn't mean that it is endorsed by the OTW.