unpopular opinions no. 92:

[parthenia]

I feel I ought to have an opinion about OTW, just because of the sheer volume of posts about OTW crossing my screen, but I still don't really get it.

Also, the emphasis on 'female community' drives me fucking mental. Sorry. I have many female friends, I think many women are awesome, I can see that fanfic brings loads of women together in a wonderfully countercultural anti-capitalist way, and I think it's marvellous that female fans organise stuff in spite of their ladyparts...I even am a woman myself. But I just don't get it with claiming the femaleness of the fanfic writing community as some special condition in need of praise and attention.

I mean. It's mostly a product of the sodding subject matter, isn't it? The majority of open source code writers are probably male. Gamers are predominantly male. Do they spend their time warbling about what a quintessentially male community they've created, apart from the couple of female programmers and gamers who've wandered by who are a bit of an anomaly but are all right PROVIDING THEY PLAY BY OUR RULES???? DO THEY? Actually maybe they do.

GAH. GAAAAAH, I SAY.

OK. I know I'm out of line with many of you. I just think that our attempts to claim the moral high ground for our odd little hobbies are very strange indeed.

If I had more time, I would love to explore the world of machinima a bit more (films and videos made using gaming software, like World of Warcraft); my son watches simple Runescape videos on Youtube.

I love the fact that the Internet has helped all this amateur, underground culture flourish. I came across a site today with links to recent good machinima,like this rather nice music video. Beautiful texture. Note the quintessentially male comments on the video. *g*

ETA, post-metafandom linkage. Oh holy fuck. I did not intend a personal rant dashed off on a Friday to be listed by Metafandom (to the point where I nearly specifically said so). Still, this is the way of the interwebs. I will reply to comments, eventually. Please be nice.

ETA 2: Don't you lot have homes to go to? *clears glasses, wipes tables, starts to stack chairs*

Comments

[elf]

Grabbing some else's fictional character is stealing, pure and simple.

Not legally, or The Wind Done Gone wouldn't have been found legal fair use.

Some usages of other people's writing are permitted--for parody, for critique, for transformative purposes. The boundaries of fair use and transformation haven't been legally established.

You can believe that fanfic lies outside of those boundaries, but that doesn't make it a simple, obvious issue.

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

That is an extremely good point when it comes to criticism - where the intent would not be to create fiction, but not for parody. A Harry Potter parody would require you to change the names, at least. I'm not sure what you mean by transformative purposes - could you explain?

"The Wind Done Gone", if I have the facts straight, wasn't found legal fair use. The case was settled out of court, by its publishers making a donation to a black college, in return for which Mitchell's estate withdrew their suit.
In addition, the novel was careful not to use the names of any of Mitchell's characters, in an attempt to avoid infringing copywrite.

Perhaps I should have clarified my use of "grabbing", by which I meant taking someone else's character and putting it into their own fiction. I'm sorry if that wasn't sufficiently made clear by context.

Actually, come to think of it, I wonder how the Thursday Next books get away with it? Presumably by only using out of copywrite characters?

[elf]

I'm not sure what you mean by transformative purposes - could you explain?

Complex legal term used in copyright litigation. "Derivative" works are often copyright infringement; "transformative" ones are not. An easy example is that taking a picture and repainting it in different colors is probably derivative; chopping it up and using the pieces as mosaic tiles in an entirely different picture is probably transformative. (How that connects to text, nobody knows.)

TWDG was indeed settled--after a court had made substantial rulings in favor of the defendants, pointing out in part that since the Mitchell estate had specifically forbidden derivatives using mixed race characters and homosexual situations, TWDG's usage of those pushed it into a market that the original creators had no interest in developing.

(The Mitchell estate demanded an injunction against the sale of TWDG. They got one. A higher court overturned it. They took it higher than that, and a higher court upheld the blockage of the injunction. The Mitchell estate declined to continue trying to sue, after a court had ruled there was not a substantial chance they'd win--part of the requirements of an injunction.)

The renamed characters in TWDG were determined to be irrelevant: everyone knew who they meant; they were deemed to be representing the original characters. Using new names doesn't affect that. (Using new names might help an argument that a piece is parody, though.)

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

I've done a little bit of reading since my last post.
The Mitchell case was vacated - which has the effect of annulling any previous case. So no precedent (that is, no legal precedent - the obiter dicta seems to have given comfort to supporters of fan-fic). The publishers of TWDG making a settlement seems to indicate that THEY thought Mitchell's lawyers had a claim.

I've also read Campbell v Acuff Music, which has been cited as the key case by OTW (sorry for the messy link: http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=CASE&court=US&vol=510&page=569
It's based around the appropriation of a Roy Orbinson riff by a rap group.

Not really on all fours with the fanfic instance.