OTW mentioned on Zuckerman's blog and Boing Boing

[femmequixotic]

OTW has been mentioned on Ethan Zuckerman's blog.

By using the word "transformative" in the organization name, the organizers of the group are advocating a legal argument - writing fan fiction based on the characters and universes of copyright-protected media is a transformative use, protected by fair use clauses in US copyright law. In other words, this is an attempt to stand up and fight for this interpretation, rather than hiding from copyright holders, which is a huge step forward to this subculture....

OTW has taken a very interesting step in declaring that fan culture has a dominant gender. In their statement of values, they note, "We value our identity as a predominantly female community with a rich history of creativity and commentary." Here, again, it's important to understand the definition of "fan culture" - media fandom, fanfic and vidding, a culture that's predominantly female, though not exclusively so.

Zuckerman's blog post has also been noted on Boing Boing.

ETA: OTW has also been mentioned on Netribution, and on the blogs of Tobias Buckell and John Scalzi. (Thanks to droneish for the links to the last two.)

--femmequixotic, bethbethbeth, ciderpress, mirabile_dictu, shrift, svmadelyn
Community Relations Committee

Comments

[elf]

I'm rather enjoying the back-and-forth with him; I rarely get the openings to explain Why Fanfic Is A Good Thing in neat, succinct posts.

I decided to take the tack "not all homages have a 1:1 comparative value," rather than "but parody is legal, and acknowledged as valid commentary on a piece... do you mean that mockery is an appropriate response, along with direct imitation, but other reactions are not?"

I didn't mind the "quilting bee" comparison--I've been to quilting bees. I have no problem comparing fanfic to "women's sewing circles." And anyone who's ever had to rely on those circles for their clothing and linens wouldn't mock them, nor disdain the art & creativity that come out of them.

He's also woefully uninformed about fanfic in general; he seems to think it's an internet-inspired thing, instead of a practice with several hundred years of history, which has only been problematic in the last 50 or so: when TV and telephones combined to give thousands of people quick communication about their favorite topics, and photocopiers gave them cheap ways to distribute their fanworks.