Organization for Transformative Works News

Both the Wall Street Journal and The Global Times wrote about China's approach to fanworks and intellectual property. The Journal reported on Alibaba Pictures' plans to "no longer hire professional screenwriters. Instead it would gather material from online forums and fan fiction writers to compete with each other over screenwriting credit."

Although screenwriters protested, others felt this was the wave of the future. "The rising demand for quality content with a built-in fanbase has driven up the price of such ideas in general, especially popular online fiction that is well-embraced by the country’s young generation."

Whether it’s crowdsourcing fandom, finding out how fans use the Internet, or starting new fandoms, tag you’re it http://bit.ly/22XL71B

The New Statesman weighed in on an important discussion as fanworks become more well known: what actually counts as one? "It comes down, as it often does, to money. Because money, and a lack of it, is at the heart of long-held tensions about fanworks. Fanfiction is overwhelmingly the product of unpaid labour, millions and millions of words given freely, whether for legal reasons or community norms.

Because it isn’t compensated – and because it is so often done by women it is devalued, as an art form and as a way to spend one’s time. When money is added to the mix, whether in giant pull-to-publish book deals or, increasingly, fanfiction contests and authors sponsored by television networks and Hollywood studios, the place that fanworks occupy in the vast sphere of adaptation and reworking begins to shift. And not always for the better."

What are fanworks? For many that’s becoming a difficult question to answer as fanworks and fandoms get co-opted: http://bit.ly/1QwCkz0