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unjapanologistSo, a Mr. Keith Mander bought up a Lord of the Rings fic archive with the express intention of making money out of it. Well. The relationship between Mander, LotR fic authors, and unfortunate legal reality as personified by the Tolkien estate is best summed up by this beautiful parable. boundbooks uses Mander's own quotes to relate how the sorry tale began and to show that, while he claims he intends to make the website in question "better" for its users, Mander is actually astoundingly clueless about what fans want. Nothing bona fide to see here. When the OTW posted a quick overview of the incident and its ramifications for the fic authors involved, Mander showed up in the comments to mansplain his plans and contrast them rather hilariously with what he refers to as the OTW's "vision" and their execution of it (he can do better because the OTW are just volunteers. Someone please point him to the Wikipedia entry for open source).
In short, train wreck. A very large part of me is too tired and heat-dead right now to do anything but snigger and microwave more popcorn, and Mander has already been told everything he needs to know directly and also indirectly by the many awesome posts about his antics currently gracing the internet.elf is keeping track of links to said awesome posts.* But rambling is fun, so I'm going to try and make a point or two about what does really irk me about this beautiful technicolor fail.
It's no great shock when some ignorant individual or entity tries to monetize fic; all this has happened before, etc etc. Doomed outsider attempts to monetize fan activities, like Fanlib and ManderFail, are good cautionary tales on what not to do. They show very clearly how commodification of fic should not happen. They're useful in that sense. But mostly, they're just so obviously appalling to fans and copyright holders alike that they make the entire idea of commodifying fanwork look bad, impossible, or even unthinkable.
In the great scheme of things, that's just counterproductive. I think that some form of commodification of fanwork is inevitable in the long run, and I think this is a good thing, because we're nearing a point where technology and economic circumstances will allow individuals to commodify their creative works in whatever way they please. It would take some extra legal change to ensure that creative works that are "derivative" can be commodified as well, but I don't think that kind of change is impossible, or even very unlikely.
Imagine the possibilities that that kind of legal change would bring. It would mean that fans could commodify their works on their terms, not have them commodified by ignorant outsiders who don't realize what makes fandom valuable for the people in it. It would mean commodification could be organized so that it happens without harming the things that makes fandom great. We could write the rules. People could chose to participate in commodification, or not, and change their minds or do different things with different works they create -all according to personal preference. We could be really adventurous and stipulate that "commodification" can be something different than "you pay, you get access to my work, and I get all the money". There are so very many possibities between that traditional view of making a profit and the gift economy that we all know and love. Commodification by fans could help actually preserve and protect those aspects of the gift economy that are essential to fandom. For instance, if fans get to decide how commodification of fanworks should work, there could be a rule that you can sell stuff for money if you want, but that you always need to make a free copy available to the community as well (see open source again). I don't think we're capable of imagining all the (beneficial and harmful) possibilities of commodification on fannish terms until we've actually had a chance to try it.
(Disclaimer: I know I'm being massively vague here and not explaining what I mean properly, especially regarding things like legal change and how commercial and gift economies can work together. Typing everything out would make this post gargantuan, and it's already twice as long as I meant it to be by this point. All I wanted to do was shoot off a short message to say that I don't like what Keith Mander got up to :P Anyway, I'm so fascinated by the possibilities of commodifying fanworks on fannish terms that I wrote up an even more tl;dr version of this argument, which will be published in the November issue of Transformative Works and Cultures. That text will hopefully provide more context. Please forgive the general incohorence of this post. It's late, it's hot, I haven't eaten, and all I can think of are the pancakes that my flatmate promised to make me.)
Carrying on... There are plenty of real-world examples, such as the Japanese dojinshi market, that suggest that some or even a significant degree of commodification isn't poison to a fandom, can go hand in hand with a gift economy, and even provides economic benefits to rights holders, besides awarding financial compensation to those fans who might sometimes prefer to get some of that along with the kinds of emotional compensation that is more generally associated with gift economies. This can be win-win for everyone. Except, notably, for people like Mander who are neither fans nor rights holders of the source works that fans like to create stuff about. The assistance that these outsiders so graciously want to provide to hapless females who can't see the gold they're sitting on would not be needed at all, because fans could do everything they can do, and better. I will play my tiniest violin to lament their exclusion. People who don't contribute anything to either the source work or the fanworks don't deserve compensation, in my book.
Anyway. I believe that commodification, for those fans who wish it and on their terms, can be a great force for good for fandom as a whole. That's why I want Keith Mander and others like him to stop throwing around their outdated, belligerent, and invasive ideas about how monetization should work and what counts as "profit". Their way is not the only way. But it's such an appalling way that they manage to make every suggestion at commodification sound suspect and inherently wrong. This isn't just incorrect, it's also dangerous. Poisoning the mere idea of commodification in the minds of fans is like holding open the door for commodification that will not happen on fannish terms. Corporations are already busy pushing the sort of commodification that most of us do not want, and that trend isn't going to go away if we ignore it.
The only thing I want right now is for fans to feel like the idea of commodification of fanworks is something that can be reclaimed. It's not the exclusive little brain disaster sandbox of random idiots like Keith Mander. It's a territory that many fans are approaching or have already stepped into, and it can be our territory, given some time and effort. I strongly suspect that grabbing control of how fanworks are commodified will turn out to be a necessary step that we'll have to take, in the near or not so near future, if we want to continue to own our works the way we want.
Personally speaking, my fic and art is a labor of love, made for my own enjoyment and to make other fans happy. I want fandom to have as much control over my stuff as possible, because it's supposed to belong to fandom. Not to corporations, to venture capitalists, or even to me -it should belong to fandom, and fandom needs all the control it can get to defend it. Fandom managed to get its own servers** when corporate-owned servers turned out to be unreliable. If corporations and other outsiders keep pushing for commodification at fans' expense, and it looks like we have to resort to getting our own shops in order to keep control of our works, then we should damn well get our own shops.***
If I have to spend my time defending Castle Fanfic from Manders, I'd much rather throw chickens at them from the battlements than stand on the outside of the walls and fight them off from an unfavorable position.
Okay, I feel better now. I may have been a little more pissed off at this guy than I originally thought.
boundbooks uses Mander's own quotes to relate how the sorry tale began and to show that, while he claims he intends to make the website in question "better" for its users, Mander is actually astoundingly clueless about what fans want. Nothing bona fide to see here. When the OTW posted a quick overview of the incident and its ramifications for the fic authors involved, Mander showed up in the comments to mansplain his plans and contrast them rather hilariously with what he refers to as the OTW's "vision" and their execution of it (he can do better because the OTW are just volunteers. Someone please point him to the Wikipedia entry for open source). In short, train wreck. A very large part of me is too tired and heat-dead right now to do anything but snigger and microwave more popcorn, and Mander has already been told everything he needs to know directly and also indirectly by the many awesome posts about his antics currently gracing the internet.
elf is keeping track of links to said awesome posts.* But rambling is fun, so I'm going to try and make a point or two about what does really irk me about this beautiful technicolor fail.It's no great shock when some ignorant individual or entity tries to monetize fic; all this has happened before, etc etc. Doomed outsider attempts to monetize fan activities, like Fanlib and ManderFail, are good cautionary tales on what not to do. They show very clearly how commodification of fic should not happen. They're useful in that sense. But mostly, they're just so obviously appalling to fans and copyright holders alike that they make the entire idea of commodifying fanwork look bad, impossible, or even unthinkable.
In the great scheme of things, that's just counterproductive. I think that some form of commodification of fanwork is inevitable in the long run, and I think this is a good thing, because we're nearing a point where technology and economic circumstances will allow individuals to commodify their creative works in whatever way they please. It would take some extra legal change to ensure that creative works that are "derivative" can be commodified as well, but I don't think that kind of change is impossible, or even very unlikely.
Imagine the possibilities that that kind of legal change would bring. It would mean that fans could commodify their works on their terms, not have them commodified by ignorant outsiders who don't realize what makes fandom valuable for the people in it. It would mean commodification could be organized so that it happens without harming the things that makes fandom great. We could write the rules. People could chose to participate in commodification, or not, and change their minds or do different things with different works they create -all according to personal preference. We could be really adventurous and stipulate that "commodification" can be something different than "you pay, you get access to my work, and I get all the money". There are so very many possibities between that traditional view of making a profit and the gift economy that we all know and love. Commodification by fans could help actually preserve and protect those aspects of the gift economy that are essential to fandom. For instance, if fans get to decide how commodification of fanworks should work, there could be a rule that you can sell stuff for money if you want, but that you always need to make a free copy available to the community as well (see open source again). I don't think we're capable of imagining all the (beneficial and harmful) possibilities of commodification on fannish terms until we've actually had a chance to try it.
(Disclaimer: I know I'm being massively vague here and not explaining what I mean properly, especially regarding things like legal change and how commercial and gift economies can work together. Typing everything out would make this post gargantuan, and it's already twice as long as I meant it to be by this point. All I wanted to do was shoot off a short message to say that I don't like what Keith Mander got up to :P Anyway, I'm so fascinated by the possibilities of commodifying fanworks on fannish terms that I wrote up an even more tl;dr version of this argument, which will be published in the November issue of Transformative Works and Cultures. That text will hopefully provide more context. Please forgive the general incohorence of this post. It's late, it's hot, I haven't eaten, and all I can think of are the pancakes that my flatmate promised to make me.)
Carrying on... There are plenty of real-world examples, such as the Japanese dojinshi market, that suggest that some or even a significant degree of commodification isn't poison to a fandom, can go hand in hand with a gift economy, and even provides economic benefits to rights holders, besides awarding financial compensation to those fans who might sometimes prefer to get some of that along with the kinds of emotional compensation that is more generally associated with gift economies. This can be win-win for everyone. Except, notably, for people like Mander who are neither fans nor rights holders of the source works that fans like to create stuff about. The assistance that these outsiders so graciously want to provide to hapless females who can't see the gold they're sitting on would not be needed at all, because fans could do everything they can do, and better. I will play my tiniest violin to lament their exclusion. People who don't contribute anything to either the source work or the fanworks don't deserve compensation, in my book.
Anyway. I believe that commodification, for those fans who wish it and on their terms, can be a great force for good for fandom as a whole. That's why I want Keith Mander and others like him to stop throwing around their outdated, belligerent, and invasive ideas about how monetization should work and what counts as "profit". Their way is not the only way. But it's such an appalling way that they manage to make every suggestion at commodification sound suspect and inherently wrong. This isn't just incorrect, it's also dangerous. Poisoning the mere idea of commodification in the minds of fans is like holding open the door for commodification that will not happen on fannish terms. Corporations are already busy pushing the sort of commodification that most of us do not want, and that trend isn't going to go away if we ignore it.
The only thing I want right now is for fans to feel like the idea of commodification of fanworks is something that can be reclaimed. It's not the exclusive little brain disaster sandbox of random idiots like Keith Mander. It's a territory that many fans are approaching or have already stepped into, and it can be our territory, given some time and effort. I strongly suspect that grabbing control of how fanworks are commodified will turn out to be a necessary step that we'll have to take, in the near or not so near future, if we want to continue to own our works the way we want.
Personally speaking, my fic and art is a labor of love, made for my own enjoyment and to make other fans happy. I want fandom to have as much control over my stuff as possible, because it's supposed to belong to fandom. Not to corporations, to venture capitalists, or even to me -it should belong to fandom, and fandom needs all the control it can get to defend it. Fandom managed to get its own servers** when corporate-owned servers turned out to be unreliable. If corporations and other outsiders keep pushing for commodification at fans' expense, and it looks like we have to resort to getting our own shops in order to keep control of our works, then we should damn well get our own shops.***
If I have to spend my time defending Castle Fanfic from Manders, I'd much rather throw chickens at them from the battlements than stand on the outside of the walls and fight them off from an unfavorable position.
Okay, I feel better now. I may have been a little more pissed off at this guy than I originally thought.
*All links in this post were found via elf, ithiliana, and starlady. Many thanks to them for keeping us informed.
**By which I don't mean to imply that the AO3 is the end-all of fic archives -it's one among many. I just happen to like the philosophy behind it very much.
***Shops being used as a methaphor for commodification here. I don't know what form commodification of fanworks might eventually take, although I have some favorite ideas, but I doubt it would resemble a "shop" in the traditional sense.
elf, ithiliana, and starlady. Many thanks to them for keeping us informed.**By which I don't mean to imply that the AO3 is the end-all of fic archives -it's one among many. I just happen to like the philosophy behind it very much.
***Shops being used as a methaphor for commodification here. I don't know what form commodification of fanworks might eventually take, although I have some favorite ideas, but I doubt it would resemble a "shop" in the traditional sense.
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