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unjapanologistOn Nov. 27-28, the Japan Association for Cultural Economics organized the first edition of a yearly workshop at Doshisha University, Kyoto, to fill the long gap between its big yearly conferences. I presented a draft paper titled 'Fanwork as a test case for open source cultural goods'.
This paper is a follow-up on my recent symposium piece 'Why we should talk about commodifying fan work', more precisely this footnote:
'Fanwork as a test case for open source cultural goods' explores this suggestion in detail. Please note that the paper was originally intended for an audience that's unfamiliar with fanwork and with open source, so it contains some Fandom 101 statements and places a very different emphasis than the TWC piece. The TWC text was written for fans and fan studies researchers, and argues that commodification of fanworks may not be that hard to imagine, or may even be beneficial for fans. The open source paper was written for cultural economics researchers, who generally won't need to be convinced that commodifying fanwork might be a good idea. They may, however, need to be convinced that a system for commodifying fanwork should be designed with the aim of protecting the rights of fans, not just with protecting the rights of copyright holders. That's what I try to argue here.
This is not the final version of the paper, and I would very, very much appreciate any comments or critiques anyone may have. Please feel free to poke me here or mail nele dot noppe at gmail dot com with any questions/opinions, however brief. All input welcome.
(Two-second headdesking: I can instantly can get reactions from dozens of strangers on the internet when I post a silly fan parody written in two hours, but feedback on academic papers that took months to finish? Whoa. The amounts of validation that come with these different sorts of writing is so hilariously out of proportion with how much effort they take :D My first thought was to offer my colleagues drabbles in exchange for a beta, but that might not quite work out.)
A list of all the papers presented at the workshop is here. Content-wise, I was particularly interested in Angeline de Dios' paper 'Filipino migrant musicians: the transnational mobilities of cultural labour', because it also tackles creativity that takes place at least partly outside of the 'official' copyright-defined framework of cultural production. I was surprised that amateur, non-monetized cultural activity seemed to be such a new topic for many of the people present. Cultural economics is a fairly new space for me, and it seems that the 'economics' in there is still often limited to economies that work primarily with money, as opposed to other economic systems like fannish gift economies. The workshop included David Throsby, an important contributor to the field, and he confirmed that cultural economics has indeed limited itself mostly to 'sanctioned' cultural activity so far. No wonder I felt slightly out of place. However, several other presenters besides Angeline did hint at cultural production by amateurs that might be interesting to research, so perhaps the field is starting to warm up to research about other sorts of economies.
My presentation was to take place on the second day of the workshop. Listening to the presentations on the first day, including Angeline's and the reactions it got, I realized that a theoretical story about fanwork and open source software production would probably be so chock full of new things for most participants that people would get confused and not give a damn. So I changed my presentation around, left out open source entirely, and concentrated on introducing the cultural production that takes place in fan communities and the challenges these communities face as industry and fans reach out to each other/get in each other's way more and more. Basically, the conclusions I draw in the draft paper without the open source framework that inspired a lot of them. This talk seemed to go over rather well; people were interested and asked a lot of questions, and several suggestions from profs. Lily Kong and David Throsby overlapped very nicely with what others have written independently about the commodification of unauthorized derivative works.
The final presentation:
(Comments on this one are of course welcome as well, but it's basically just the paper stripped down very thoroughly. I'm not sure if I'll be developing the presentation separately at any point.)
This paper is a follow-up on my recent symposium piece 'Why we should talk about commodifying fan work', more precisely this footnote:
The best-known and most developed hybrid economy currently in existence is that of open source software. In fact, one way to make the commodification of fan works easier to envision for all parties involved is to imagine fan work as a sort of "open source cultural good" (Hughes et al. 2007) that could be exchanged in a hybrid economy comparable to the hybrid economy surrounding open source software. Fannish production practices share many key characteristics with open source software production. For instance, the fan community has a history of sharing and collaboration, with common values about the aims and workings of that collaboration (Hellekson 2009, 115), which are qualities that make a community exceptionally suited for open source production of goods.
In more practical terms, open source and fannish production practices are similar enough that the vocabulary, problems, and solutions from one can help us articulate similar problems and find possible solutions in the area of the other. The complicated matter of copyright regulations is one obvious example in which insights from and developments in open source production can support the growth of a hybrid economy for fan work. On the economic side of things, business models crafted for open source software production can provide inspiration for the concrete ways in which fan works could be commodified so that fans receive sufficient benefits and control over their creations. Last but not least, given the exemplary function of the well-known and successful hybrid economy of open source software (Benkler 2007, loc. 883), casting fan work as an open source cultural good and drawing comparisons with open source may go a long way toward explaining to nonfans how and why an integration of fan work into the broader cultural economy could be both socially and economically desirable.
In more practical terms, open source and fannish production practices are similar enough that the vocabulary, problems, and solutions from one can help us articulate similar problems and find possible solutions in the area of the other. The complicated matter of copyright regulations is one obvious example in which insights from and developments in open source production can support the growth of a hybrid economy for fan work. On the economic side of things, business models crafted for open source software production can provide inspiration for the concrete ways in which fan works could be commodified so that fans receive sufficient benefits and control over their creations. Last but not least, given the exemplary function of the well-known and successful hybrid economy of open source software (Benkler 2007, loc. 883), casting fan work as an open source cultural good and drawing comparisons with open source may go a long way toward explaining to nonfans how and why an integration of fan work into the broader cultural economy could be both socially and economically desirable.
'Fanwork as a test case for open source cultural goods' explores this suggestion in detail. Please note that the paper was originally intended for an audience that's unfamiliar with fanwork and with open source, so it contains some Fandom 101 statements and places a very different emphasis than the TWC piece. The TWC text was written for fans and fan studies researchers, and argues that commodification of fanworks may not be that hard to imagine, or may even be beneficial for fans. The open source paper was written for cultural economics researchers, who generally won't need to be convinced that commodifying fanwork might be a good idea. They may, however, need to be convinced that a system for commodifying fanwork should be designed with the aim of protecting the rights of fans, not just with protecting the rights of copyright holders. That's what I try to argue here.
This is not the final version of the paper, and I would very, very much appreciate any comments or critiques anyone may have. Please feel free to poke me here or mail nele dot noppe at gmail dot com with any questions/opinions, however brief. All input welcome.
(Two-second headdesking: I can instantly can get reactions from dozens of strangers on the internet when I post a silly fan parody written in two hours, but feedback on academic papers that took months to finish? Whoa. The amounts of validation that come with these different sorts of writing is so hilariously out of proportion with how much effort they take :D My first thought was to offer my colleagues drabbles in exchange for a beta, but that might not quite work out.)
A list of all the papers presented at the workshop is here. Content-wise, I was particularly interested in Angeline de Dios' paper 'Filipino migrant musicians: the transnational mobilities of cultural labour', because it also tackles creativity that takes place at least partly outside of the 'official' copyright-defined framework of cultural production. I was surprised that amateur, non-monetized cultural activity seemed to be such a new topic for many of the people present. Cultural economics is a fairly new space for me, and it seems that the 'economics' in there is still often limited to economies that work primarily with money, as opposed to other economic systems like fannish gift economies. The workshop included David Throsby, an important contributor to the field, and he confirmed that cultural economics has indeed limited itself mostly to 'sanctioned' cultural activity so far. No wonder I felt slightly out of place. However, several other presenters besides Angeline did hint at cultural production by amateurs that might be interesting to research, so perhaps the field is starting to warm up to research about other sorts of economies.
My presentation was to take place on the second day of the workshop. Listening to the presentations on the first day, including Angeline's and the reactions it got, I realized that a theoretical story about fanwork and open source software production would probably be so chock full of new things for most participants that people would get confused and not give a damn. So I changed my presentation around, left out open source entirely, and concentrated on introducing the cultural production that takes place in fan communities and the challenges these communities face as industry and fans reach out to each other/get in each other's way more and more. Basically, the conclusions I draw in the draft paper without the open source framework that inspired a lot of them. This talk seemed to go over rather well; people were interested and asked a lot of questions, and several suggestions from profs. Lily Kong and David Throsby overlapped very nicely with what others have written independently about the commodification of unauthorized derivative works.
The final presentation:
(Comments on this one are of course welcome as well, but it's basically just the paper stripped down very thoroughly. I'm not sure if I'll be developing the presentation separately at any point.)
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(I feel like talking about the one time I made a print zine and sold it for a profit. I got fannishly lectured by someone who's seriously old school in fandom, but it was also the one time I had money to buy stuff at a con, so I didn't actually care too much about the lecture.)
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Was this at a con where selling zines was not done or something? My own con visits (outside of Japan) have been extremely few in the last couple of years, but I distinctly remember print zines being sold without any apparent trouble at a few French and Belgian cons some years ago. It wasn't until I got involved with LJ/DW fandom that I realized that some people find such zines problematic.
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The fannish culture of the con was supposed to be that one only sold a zine at cost, so that one didn't make a profit on the zine. I was an excessively hungry early twenty-something, though, and since at least half the people at the con were selling their zines for profit (so far as I could tell), I didn't really see what the problem was.
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At the cons where they sell dojinshi here in Japan, most fans seem to sell their zines at cost, but no secret is made of the fact that a sizeable minority does make a profit -in the case of Comiket, the numbers are published openly in the con's official catalogue. I get the impression that nobody minds as long as those who make a profit are still clearly creating their works for 'fannish' reasons, out of love for the source works. People only get cranky when someone makes a profit by deliberately making popular stuff that they know will earn them a heap of money.
I really like that attitude, and I think this is why I'd disagree with the person who told you off. What matters (to me, on an emotional level) is not just the way you chose to distribute your stuff, but the reason why you made that stuff. If you try to sell me a Harry Potter zine that you made because you enjoy making fanworks about HP, cool. If you don't like HP but try to sell me a HP zine that you made for the sole reason of making money, I'll probably find that a lot less charming. Perhaps I'd still buy the thing, mind, but the sales tactics behind it would make me uncomfortable.
On this topic, I really like this quote from Evangelia Berdou's 'Organization in Open Source Communities: At the Crossroads of the Gift and Market Economies':
“A moral economy is not simply about what limits are placed on how economic motivations encroach upon other social motivations, but about what kind of motives guide the process and outcome. It is about developing an understanding of how the wealth and the opportunities created through the process of peer production can be employed to address the limits of markets and promote the values of mutual empowerment.”
Basically, motivation matters, and also, it may well be in the interests of those who create stuff for non-commercial motivations to promote their creations more effectively. Because, for one, those creations are often things that will never get made in a purely money-motivated market system. The more people hear about and get access to those non-market-motivated creations, the better. I really agree with that.
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pg. 12, 2nd paragraph "possibly hybrid"
pg. 14, 1st paragraph "while fans unarguable"
BTW, are you familiar with QuestionCopyright.org? They don't address fan-works specifically very much, but they also draw on parallels between the open software movement and cultural production.
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I've heard the site mentioned here and there but am not familiar with them. Will check it out!
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(It's running late here and I have some big things scheduled tomorrow, so I may not be able to get back to you for a day or so.)
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