On Permission in Fandom and other Fannish Etiquette

[podcath]

On Permission in Fandom and other Fannish Etiquette

Transforming transformative works
Several years ago, there was a challenge on an LJ flashfic com that created a huge kerfuffle: the challenge was to remix an existing story but did not require the remixer to get permission from the original author. Fans split pretty decisively between those who felt that transformative works were transformative works were transformative works...and those who felt that fannish rules of conduct should differ between source text owners and fellow fans; between those who felt we existed in a community where it was polite to ask whether one could remix and rewrite another person's fanfic...and those who felt that all texts should be treated with the same (dis)respect. [If you missed it back when, and really want to see the wank of yesteryear, here are some basic links: the original challenge and debate in comments; the Fandom Wank report; and, representatively, carolyn_claire, cofax7; and marythefan on the issue.]

Personally, I've always been torn on the issues: I firmly believe that all transformations/adaptations/derivations should be permitted. I firmly believe that especially in a place like fandom, here our pseudonym and reputation are often our only "reward," mutual respect is really important. I firmly believe that "professional fan fiction" (the usual litany of Wide Sargasso Sea, Wicked, and the Hours) is fundamentally different from fanfic, insofar as the culture surrounding fanfic is often an important part of the texts. As a result, I believe that our fannish interactions should probably differ from the relationship of fans to professionals.

And yet, looking at this discussion from six years ago, I can barely fathom the passion and the arguments. I'm pretty sure the same discussion would not occur today in the same way. After all, we've moved on from a culture where the fannish etiquette would discourage fans from sharing vids with other fans without explicit permission and where academics seriously debated whether they should link to a fannish LJ post in an article to a tumblr culture where the entire platform is meant to reproduce in toto essays, images, and fan works. With an interface like tumblr, asking a person to fully reproduce a piece is as bizarre as those fans in the olden days who'd regularly ask whether they could link a post on the Internets. Hypertextual linking is kinda what the internet is there for, right? Just like copying is what tumblr is there for. Heck, LJ in its ever desperate attempt to mimic all things everywhere, has a similar built in function now.


Fannish etiquette and its shifting rules
So why am I starting with all of this ancient history that doesn't have anything to do with podfic (in fact, I may not have heard my first podfic until after that incident, and I definitely did not record until a year later). Because it raises two issues that I think are important for how we look at podfic and the permission culture surrounding it.

(1) For one, it showcases the centrality of fannish rules that are quite different from any legal or even normal people interactions. Connecting another fan's legal name and pseudonym is one of those fannish etiquette things that often doesn't make a lot of sense to mundanes and yet is one of the deeply held and shared rules. [Though, clearly, with changing fan cultures and changing attitudes of fans, this may soon disappear as well.] We share a fannish space, a community, and as such, it is polite to follow the arbitrary yet nevertheless established rules. And just like any other shared convention, over time, these rules and expectations may change.

The biggest issue here for me is the ever increasing fan community (and really, to even use the singular here is ludicrous!). We were multitudes when we came online in the early 90s; we were even more diverse when the popular media began to notice us in the early 00s; and now? While I'd love to think there's still a three degrees of separation between me and any other fan, I know better. One of my best friends purposefully does not have a Blanket Permission statement on her fiction, because she likes to communicate with the potential podficcer. That's a very old skool view of fandom, I think, where we all are here to talk to one another. I tend to stay in my corner of comfort usually when I ask permission, and pretty much don't expect to be turned down by people I know. But that again presupposes a containable group of people, where I may not have met this author in person, but they've met this friend I roomed with at a con kind of scenario. And I don't think that's anywhere remotely likely any more when I look at fandom today.

(2) For another, it raises the question of what, in fact, constitutes transformative works, i.e., where are the borders of creator autonomy and control, what kinds of engagements with the fan work are acceptable, and which require some form of permission (clearly not legally as much as culturally). Personally, for example, I feel perfectly within my right to analyze and criticize a story and even to quote segments, but within fannish norms that wasn't necessarily accepted a decade ago. Everything else, as we have seen above, is even more complicated within the circumferences of fandom.

Would I be OK to use a character another fan created? To rewrite their story with the pairing or the ending I'd prefer? I certainly would. But I would not share it publicly! Heck, I have files on my computer that I spellchecked, others where I pulled out certain terms I dislike, one where I swapped the pairing, because I had a dom/sub preference. And that's a frustrating thing for writers, but it is the same frustration they seem to feel when I don't want to read their WiP a day at a time as it is posted, when I read the surprise ending first, when I skim and skip entire sections because I'm not interested in that story line or that character. Readers are notorious in not doing what we're supposed to, and noone should know that better than the (fan) reader turned (fan) writer! After all, Rowling's still frustrated with all those Draco apologists, right? :)

So, connected with the do not transform my work is also an even stronger, do not copy my work. That would be clearly plagiarism if done without acknowledging the author (and in fandom all we have is our name and reputation, so withholding this virtual reward of feedback and positive name recognition is clearly a bad thing!), but it's also not considered a good thing when done with author name and links and all. Here we stumble into the tumblr phenomenon again, which is kind of counterintuitive to old skool fans. Because even with a clear link, which would negate the feedback and acknowledgment issue, there is a sense in which fandom for a long time existed in the fringes, and fans individually or collectively wanted to retain the ability to pull their works. As a fan who has issues with her pseudonymous identity, I totally get that. As a fan who loves archives and wants access to everything long after the fact, I loathe it. As fandom is becoming less stigmatized, these prohibitions are less severe, but posting a story in full without explicit permission of the author, for example, still seems in bad taste.


Transformation and derivation, collaboration and performance, oh my!
So, this is the general state of the field into which podfic has stumbled. Transformative—or not? Collaborative. Or not really? A copy of the text. Or not? Certainly, a version, but with extensive work on the podficcer's part. Because I think that there is a difference between what writers do when they write fanfic or even what artist do when they illustrate and what we do. The closest I've come in analogy is translation, which seems to be a good model. In the end, to me the term transformative fanwork is kind of useless, because we get stuck in layers of connotations and legal meanings. For a little while there fanfic was happy with letting itself be called derivative fiction, which often seems more appropriate to me. But in that vein I'd actually see translation and podficcing less as derivation and more as adaptation.

I actually think talking about it in terms of performance and translation is really useful. Translation is, I think, the closest fan work to podficcing. It keeps a lot of what makes something specifically this work of art yet translates it--not into another medium but another language. And anyone who's read the classics (or Beowolf or any foreign book) in different translations know what a difference this makes!Baudelaire's Fleurs du Mal, for example, has a great web site (http://fleursdumal.org/) where there are often 3, 5, 7 translations of the same poem. And they make a difference. After all, most podficcers appreciate different version of one story exactly because there is more to the podfic than just the author's words. The specific performance matters!

Francesca Coppa's essay Writing Bodies in Space is an interesting argument that posits fan fiction as an embodied translation so to speak. Just like theatre performances, fan fiction offers different versions of the same 'source' and plays with it. I think that's a fascinating but maybe limiting description of fan fiction, but it gets to that aspect of fanfic that is closest to what podficcers do: a performance, a version of a written text. We don't often think of novels or short stories demanding performance, but then an Ibsen play can almost be read like a novel, so....

But we remain in most cases close to the source text. Whereas fan fiction can go and write fanfic of fanfic of fanfic, we are like the fanfic writers who come back again and again to the moment of the source, revisit this central scene/story again and again. In so doing, we are more closely tied to the source and short of retelling a fic in our own words, I do think that we are indebted to the writers in ways these writers are not indebted to The Powers That Be. We do use the writers' words, after all, just like theatre performances do. My favorite punk!rock favorite version of Macbeth couldn't have existed without Shakespeare's words and plot, but Shakespeare's written play would continue to exist without this performance. It would be much poorer for it though!!!

The one analogy I've yet to see mention is the vidding connection. Vidding remains in the same medium yet brings to it editorial tools, cutting the music, juxtaposing the shots etc. At the end of the say, however, the images are given. (And yes, they can import images from other texts but then we can add music or soundtrack as well...the basic argument stands, I think.) And yet, we consider vidding not a performance. We think of it as derivative or, more narrowly, transformative. It doesn't add new material (derivative), it doesn't translate into different language/form/medium (performative), but it does manipulate and alter the very medium initially given.

And we would probably be upset as fans to demand of vidders to get permission, but that seems to be a function of the media economy, i.e., the artist whose work gets sampled is not at the same level we are. I'm pretty sure people would protest a remixing of a famous vid without permission (I'm sure, for example, that counteragent got permission for her beautiful hommage, Destiny Calling. But just like with the fanfic of fanfic issue, above, the point is that it is a lateral appropriation rather than taking from a more powerful (cultural and economic) agent.

Which brings us back to podfic. Maybe our problem is that we're too close to the source text. In fanfic, the transformative argument is more easily made with extreme AUs than with canon compliant stories that could be mistaken for "the real book." I wonder if the same's true for us. Would sampling the first lines of 100 Teen Wolf fics be transformative? Would 25 sex scenes read one after the other be? How would that differ from reading a story beginning to end.

In fact, looking at the way theatripod has moved beyond what I'd consider a podfic definition to edit the story into a script and perform it more like a radio play, I am reminded of the way the more radical transformations in fan fiction actually have a stronger standing, i.e., if someone writes a story that could be mistaken for a tie-in novel, there's the potential for having the products be mistaken for one another. Noone's gonna mistake this NC17 Snarry story for Rowling's work! Likewise, we have all these conversations about how much and how little we can deviate from the story when we are reading it. But changing prose into a script; deleting entire segments, really transforms the original work in a way that they can't be mistaken for one another.

They aren't our words. We are borrowing, citing, performing them. Then again, Rebecca Tushnet argues in "Copy This Essay" (http://www.tushnet.com/copythisessay.pdf) that there isn't and shouldn't be a word limit on what is appropriate citation. Aren't we doing a performative citation? When and where would that be OK?


Procedures and policies
I think of Blanket Permission a bit like Creative Commons these days. Things are copyrighted online for better or worse, but the author has the choice to control the strictness of that copyright. When I put CC on an blog post I write (or publish in a place that has a standard CC license), I agree from the get go that this essay can be reproduced (in part of course always as a citation, but even in toto as long as name, title, and original publication are linked). Likewise, the creator can specifically determine what they allow and what they don't, in any desired combination: for example, "allow remix, podfic, and translation with credit; do not allow commercial transformation and full reproduction."

I cannot and do not want to enforce BP on those that do not want it, or tell them how to frame their BPs. I do think that thinking of podfic as just another form of creative fan work--resembling some in one aspect and others in another--may indeed get people to realize that BP is a creative CC and welcome the wider dissemination of their creative ideas. Then again, I may just have to wait another decade and the issue will have become moot anyway. Or maybe it already almost has.

Comments

[princessofgeeks]

I would hesitate to call fan fiction "derivative" because "derivative" has a specific legal meaning that in the US would be more limiting for fans. The copy right law specifically uses that word when listing uses of a work that are reserved to the original author.

I think "transformative" was chosen because that term puts the fan works more clearly in the "fair use" portion of the US copyright legal language. When the OTW was invented it made a lot of people go "bzuh?" because they hadn't heard that word much -- it felt like legal jargon. Which it is! But that's my take on why we often hesitate in calling fanworks "derivative."

In my opinion, podfic is much closer to a performance, like a radio play or an audiobook, than it is to a translation into another language.

Do you have a sense of where the fanworks community is in regard to permission for podfic? Or are things still evolving?

To me, most vids are in another category entirely than a reading that is recorded of a fic, because they are not fans using other fans' work. They are fans using professional work. That is a still a big divide between our typical practices.

As always, thanks for the thinky!

sorry, pseud fail

[podcath]

See, but I'm a bit uncomfortable with having legal terminology drive all of our theoretical and philosophical discussions. I actually don't wanna go back to derivative as a term, but I want to get out of transformative being the only point we are concerned with, if that makes sense.

I agree that none of these analogies work perfectly, but I was trying to point out how there are aspects of each that relate....I agree that it is a performance, but it also involves editing and other words that are more related to other fanworks...

Re permission. I think it's all over the place now, but given the history I've been sketching out and the changed in fan cultures I's expect it to be moving toward less rather than more...

And thanks for commenting...I need the challenges to continue thinking! :D

Re: sorry, pseud fail

[princessofgeeks]

Oh, I have no problem with differentiating normal language, or even fannish language, from legalese -- but the hesitance to use "derivative" in fannish circles may have a specific legal basis -- a chilling effect, if you will. It's certainly very descriptive, just as calling our fanworks "based on" or "developed from" the original works is..... I wasn't trying to quash the use of "derivative," just ponder on why it might not have been the word choice in the high-profile definitions of fanworks that are trying to legitimize it in the legal sense. In the "everyone's doing it" sense, fanworks have been legit forever.

I do agree with you 100 percent that internet trends are changing fannish practices, and like it always does, the pace of change in customs speeds up when that change goes digital.

Tumblr, with its absolute assumption of reblogging, is a very different thing that the previous fannish bent toward author control and the ability to pull works and disappear. I also agree totally with what you say about the change in sheer numbers. Now we can be pretty sure that a bunch more people are reading or seeing or viewing or listening to our fan works than we know. Gone are the invite-only lists and the friends locked LJs of yore, now that we have big pan fandom archives.

I've never worried myself about getting critiqued or linked to without permission; I also have a blanket permissions statement on my DW. But I love to know when people are riffing off my work, because I want to join the fun.

But in the old debate over reviews and concrit, I was firmly on the side of "readers and reviewers should do what they will". Once it's posted, it's in a large degree out of my hands.

I remember when I was first discovering fan fiction and I wanted to "play in the sandbox" of another writer's epic LOTR fic about Frodo.... I wrote to her asking permission, assuming it would be granted, reasoning by analogy. After all, we were riffing on Tolkien, wouldn't it be fun to riff off of each other? She was not willing to let me, and I agreed with her wishes.

But I was surprised.

But I did two things, even as a newbie -- I asked permission, and I followed the fanfic author's wishes when she denied me permission.

Like you, I have copied beloved but flawed fic and made private changes, but I would never ever distribute that.

It's fascinating to see how our practices change.

I personally have been utterly gobsmacked by the 50 Shades thing. Utterly surprised and amazed. Utterly.

[melannen]

There was, actually, a rolling flap for awhile, in the early '00s, about fans using other fans' vids without permission - specifically, vidders ripping their clips from other vids instead of from original source - about evenly split between "OMG UNETHICAL", "WTF, it's the same footage either way," and "as long as you transform the clips enough - i.e. aren't re-using whole sequences in the same order - it's fine - but if you do that you're a plaugiaraist."

I haven't heard anything about it lately, probably because original source is so much easier to get that it's pretty pointless to "steal clips" (at the time, source was often only available on VHS, so unless you had the knowhow and equipment to rip from VHS, or the connections to get someone to do it for you, other vids were often the easiest place to get source). On the other hand, IIRC, some people *were* borrowing and repurposing entire sequences from other vids, not just re-ripping clips, which is slightly different (and interesting in a transformative way.)

(I know, I've wandered afield from podfic, but now I'm sort of fascinated by the idea of fanvid remixing.)

[arduinna]

It was more than just taking raw clips identical to the source footage that was the issue; it was taking the work other fans had done to their clips and presenting it as your own. So yes, effectively "plagiarizing" segments of other vidders' work.

To put it in podfic terms, it would be like a podficcer deciding that they want to have two voices in their podfic of a story. Then instead of figuring out how to do another voice themselves or finding a collaborator, they went out and found an existing podfic of the same story that had the right sound, and then without asking they chopped it up to provide the second voice, presenting the combined version as though they'd done both voices themselves.

[podcath]

And see, for me the big issue would remain CREDIT. Like none of that would bother me all that much but I'd hate to have my voice out there without any link back to me. ...Then again, if it were in a fan work I hated...

But yes, I very much remember the conversations and the work many had put into editing segments that hen carelessly were taken...

[melannen]

Yeah, I think a lot of the problem (and apparently it's still a big issue in some vidding communities, google tells me) is that the amount of work a vidder does on a clip varies; sometimes they do enough (changing aspect ratios, lighting, effects, etc., you can tell I'm not much of a vidder) that it's definitely a work in its own right. On the other hand, a lot of vidders just stick source in WMP and then put the clips in a different order - and it's not obvious to a casual viewer (or sometimes even a casual vidder, who hasn't done much work with altering source) which is which.

[violetemerald]

I just stumbled across this discussion now, 2-and-a-half years too late, but as a vidder and a podficcer I'm very interested in the vidding connection.

The main problem with people stealing vids -- hence the need for most of us to add watermarks to our vids nowadays with our username -- is that people weren't giving us credit at all. Claiming all of our hard work finding that exact moment when they formed that pretty smile, the effects we added, the speeding up or down we may have done, the lyric matching we decided on ourselves -- and pretending it was their own? It felt just as bad as someone posting someone else's fanfic under their own username and taking credit for it. And the main problem with "Remixing" vids, even with credit, is that the one time it happened to me, around 2007, they didn't really credit me in a very obvious way, more like saying something like "this was inspired by luvtheheaven's vid" at the bottom of their YouTube description and no it wasn't INSPIRED you idiot, you stole my clips without even letting me know, and most vid-watchers would still assume the entire vid was theirs, since that is the assumption in fandom spaces. Even though half of the editing sequences in that vid they posted were mine. And to add insult to injury, while this is subjective, the new parts of the vid were just... bad. They used my relatively more impressive editing to improve their bad vid, like someone writing a multi-chapter fanfic and saying in a brief author's note at the end of the final chapter "inspired by this other fanfic" and then every other paragraph is someone else's words, despite no quotation marks or clear distinction between which part is yours and which isn't, and no real credit.

Now if someone wanted to do something really unique with a video of mine, something where I got credit, where it was obvious in the title of the vid "my remix of luvtheheaven's vid", I'd probably be cool with that. It's just so not the norm in vidding spaces, and so it'd probably confuse me and I'd feel defensive and upset at first if no one asked me permission. It's a culture thing, and it's just whatever one is used to, habits and expectations...

The thing about vids is that you do credit the source fandom, the source TV show or film or nowadays webseries, or the interview, or the photos, or whatever it is you're using. The song too. The weird thing is when someone comments on a vid you made set to a YouTube artist's cover of a song saying "Wow you're a good singer," assuming I made the cover, despite me crediting in MULTIPLE PLACES the artist's name (which is not "luvtheheaven" but since they don't know my first and last name, maybe they think luvtheheaven IS Megan Nicole or whoever). Most of the time, even if someone is unfamiliar with the source fandom or the song artist, and even if a vidder forgot or chose not to credit them anywhere (a choice often made for fear of copyright detection lol), the more common question is "what fandom is this?" or "who's the singer, I love it!" -- You're not taking credit by default for something that isn't yours. People know to assume credit belongs elsewhere.

With podfics, people also assume that you didn't write the fic in question, or create any professional sounding music or even sound effects yourself. They do assume every character's voice is you unless it's obviously so drastically different that they couldn't be the same person. But you know what I mean? The culture makes a lot of things complicated. I don't know.

All of these discussions still seem relevant today. Sorry for dredging up almost 3-year-old posts.

[podcath]

Oh, I remember that. It was first kinda weird, and then I realized how much sense it made when you considered the time it might take to edit certain segments.

My credit thing is with photomanips. Do I credit the screenshot? That seems kinda odd. These days I tend to do my own so as to avoid that.... But at what point are we overcrediting???

[princessofgeeks]

To me there is no such thing as overcrediting. But my training was all in old school journalism, where everything had to be attributed. And my editors had never heard of the term "common knowledge," LOL.

I love attribution. The more the better. Overcrediting? Impossible.

[jelazakazone]

I agree that there is no such thing as overcrediting, however, as a fic writer, sometimes I'm unsure about where an idea came from. Like, I know I got it from another fic (just a kernel), but I'm not sure where. Do I make a note that I read it somewhere, but not sure where?

[princessofgeeks]

I don't think I would do that myself, but I have given "influenced by" lists of fic or authors in many author's notes.

And of course there are so many tropes now that we see all over fandom and no one can really take credit for them -- like aliens make them do it (there's even a Star Trek episode that uses that!!!). There's no way to credit those either.

But sometimes a fic is not a remix but is definitely directly inspired by another fic.

This is just my opinion, however. Fannish practice varies.

[jelazakazone]

I just wrote and posted a fic which was definitely inspired by another one, but not a remix, so I get that.

What I was referring to was a kernel of a thought that influences a story, but I don't know the source. And yes, there are some tropes we see play out over and over, especially fandom specific ones, so it's hard to know the source in that case.

So true! Each person is an individual:D

[melannen]

My thing is with people who are very adamant about crediting icon-makers, but never credit the artist who created the original art in the icons! Yes, icon-making is work, but so are taking photos and drawing things.

With screenshots: some people who do screenshots do ask for credit, but I generally assume that if they don't specifically ask for credit, they don't expect it. That's more 'fannish custom I've absorbed' than a well-thought-out ethical position, though.

[elf]

I read this. I enjoyed it. I have very little connection to podficcing (or vidding), so I have nothing direct to say about it.

I have a blanket permission attached to my AO3 account, which I expect to be entirely pointless because I produce so little fic, in so many fandoms, that I'm not likely to catch anyone's remixy attention. (I occasionally hope people realize that means it's fine if the filk actually gets *sung,* and even recorded if people would like.) (But a notable amount of my filk isn't at AO3 because I can't figure out if it belongs there. It doesn't fit into AO3's fandom categories.)

I don't have a lot of interest in museum-display art, that people are supposed to look at and think about and not play with. I want stories to be tools and toys: things we can use to enhance our lives, in whatever way suits us best.

[podcath]

Then thank you for reading and for commenting :) I'd like to hear more sung material, that'd be very cool!

And I love people who have BPs. It makes such a difference for me, especially on AO3 where it may be hard to track down an emil address or other ways to contact the author. I tend to record fic by people I know or have BPs...

Tools and toys...great description!!!

[princessofgeeks]

Wow; I hadn't thought of adding the BP to my AO3 account. I guess the place to do that is the author profile?

Because I do get more hits there than on DW, come to think of it.

No one has remixed me either yet, that I didn't already know them, and nobody has recorded podfic at all of my stuff, but I'm fine with it.

[anatsuno]

What a really neat write up, on top of your thoughts. :)

I am like you torn on the usage of transformative and derivative. they make sense as legal categories, and I totally understand the point OTW makes by using transformative! but then when we start operating by that legal framework inside fandom, podfic then should clearly be described as a derivative work (of a transformative work of fanfic), and since we've actually started to ascribe *value* and not just a legal meaning to the words, everything becomes shitty and complicated. To justify how what podficcers are doing is valuable/creative/work, we've started saying that it is transformative, which I think it is when I take the word for its basic, non-legal meaning, but which I do NOT think it is from a legal standpoint (without ascribing a good or bad value to that fact).

So anyway, I'm very conflicted on the use of these words, the meanings of which have become muddled, are plural and complex and rarely explicit when we use them.

(I also don't think translation is the right analogy, but I know you know there's no perfect analogy - though I think theatre performance and song covers are much better suited - and I also am super biased in my reactions regarding any analogies using translation, so that's perhaps more my translator-lizard brain speaking. It's not that important.)

I've always appreciated you pointing out how important the context and interpretive community is. This is a point I learned from you and never forgot since. (so, um, a belated thank you?) This part here --

I firmly believe that all transformations/adaptations/derivations should be permitted. I firmly believe that especially in a place like fandom, here our pseudonym and reputation are often our only "reward," mutual respect is really important.

-- is true to me too, but it's such a tough balancing act in many of our collective discussions and debates...

Um. I'm sure I have more to say but I'm petering out into unarticulated-ness, so I'll stop here. Thank you for posting. :))

[podcath]

Oh, I'm glad you pointed out the issues with the translation analogy. You may have a vested interest, but I still think your point is very well taken. No two fan works are alike...in fact as I was thinking about this yesterday I wondered if choreography and dance might be another useful comparison.

And thanks on commenting on my role in your thinking about the importance of community. I sometimes feel like a broken record, but...it is really central in these conversations, isn't it?

[princessofgeeks]

The community and that context is hugely important, and another way that fanworks are different from published works today. Audience and producer -- the lines are so blurred inside fandom. And that is way cool IMHO.

[princessofgeeks]

FYI, I think legally an audio version of a fic would be considered transformative, because it's going into a wholly different medium. But I'm not a lawyer, LOL.

But I know you couldn't record a published book and sell it, because audiobooks are now covered under copyright as derivative works.

Noncommercial? Who knows? Case law is sparse.

[anatsuno]

how do you figure that podfic could be considered transformative of a fic, when audiobooks are counted as derivative for published books? (as are, as far as I know, various performances of a play on stage, but I might be confused)

legal things are such a nightmare, good god. (she says, from a country where the rules are different anyway. siiiiiigh)

[princessofgeeks]

I don't; I'm guessing.

But drastically changing the medium or the purpose is one way that works are considered transformative under fair use.

On the other hand, creating and selling an audiobook of a given written book is now an accepted thing in publishing, so those rights are definitely written into contracts. Whether they are sufficiently transformative in a noncommercial setting has never been litigated, as far as I know.

But making a play of a nonfiction book -- a different medium -- survived a copyright challenge, I THINK. I could be very wrong about this.

You're right about the legalese, though. It's hairsplitting that would make a theologian cry. And I'm admittedly way out of my depth here without doing some research.

[dodificus]

I would love to see the permission culture in podfic change, when I started (for me at least) there was such a power imbalance between the podficcer and author. My permission requests were basically me falling all over myself telling the author all the reasons they could say no if they wanted to. My accent, my newness, their lack of knowledge about what podfic was, their general dislike of the idea. And that power imbalance hasn't really changed much, we're still at the authors mercy to either say yes, no or choose not to answer at all.

I kind of cringe to think of myself back then. People can say no if they want, obvs. But it felt very fraught and somewhat like they were doing me a favour.

And now I feel differently about it, authors aren't gods anymore. And I do feel like putting the onus on the podficcer to seek and find permission is a little hypocritical. Who on earth is it hurting if someone makes a fanvid/artwork/podfic/translation of your story?

I don't know how articulate all this is but I've word vomited enough for now. I liked your post!:)

[podcath]

I don't grovel :) But I also don't have huge issues with the power imbalance. I just want everyone to be polite, and that includes the authors. That's when I get frustrated...when there's needless jerking around.

I do think it doesn't hurt anyone to make the podfic but it should behoove us to interact with the author without BP if we archive it somewhere,...Allison reminded me of that difference yesterday, and I think it's a good one to make...

Hey, I like your word vomit. LOL. It's a very complicated issue with lots of different aspects and...I think various approaches and ideas are important!!!

[dodificus]

Ha! I totally grovelled:D And maybe I'm a little bitter now thinking of how unsure of myself I was back then but that's no one's fault but my own, I'm sure.

I think it's great that it's become more of a discussion recently, rather than an unquestioned norm. Whatever the outcome.

[podcath]

Well, I may have groveled.... LOL Thinking back...

Yes, as I said, I actually think the culture may be changing in general, but my view of fandom is much more still the small group of three degrees where I *want* to talk to folks, because I love their story and we love the same characters and...

But I like thinking about the larger implications and the similarities and differences between different fan works. I heard the most interesting talk a while back on Best Practice in re to copyright in dance. I know nothing about dance, but the issues were compelling and I learned a lot in terms of various collaborative aspects and performative contributions...

[princessofgeeks]

I too want to talk to everyone!

But that's extrovert me!

[chemm80]

Ha! I totally grovelled:D And maybe I'm a little bitter now thinking of how unsure of myself I was back then but that's no one's fault but my own, I'm sure.

I know what you mean. I think Cath is right, though; this is at least partly a product of the changes in fandom culture. People used to be so touchy about their precious little "fic babies," and maybe this is just my impression as still a relative fandom noob (about five years all told), but it doesn't seem that people are as precious about it as they used to be. I have so much less patience with this attitude than I used to, as well.

[caput_mortuum]

This is exactly how I feel about this.

[montanaharper]

When I first got into fandom (c.1995), one of my primary mentors was the_shoshanna. When I asked her what the community expectation was wrt writing sequels to fanfic, she told me her own rule of thumb: It's polite to ask. It's polite to say yes when asked.

I've pretty much always stuck to that, though checking for blanket permissions has replaced asking at this point. I probably wouldn't go to the effort of hunting down an email address for someone, not unless the story was seriously hammering on the inside of my skull. Even then, I'd probably write it first. If they said no it'd end up as drawerfic, but at least it'd be drawerfic that was no longer driving me to distraction. (I wouldn't ask first because I don't finish everything most things I start, and I'd hate for them to be looking forward to something from me that never ends up coming. Writer's block from guilt over failure to meet fannish commitments is the main reason why I've written very little in the last 2-3 years.)

Personally, I've got blanket permissions posted everywhere. (I think. Def on my DW and no-longer-updated LJ, and I'm pretty sure on AO3, too.) If people want to do something with my fic, they're absolutely welcome to. I'm thrilled that anything I wrote would inspire another person to create.

[jelazakazone]

I'm thrilled that anything I wrote would inspire another person to create.

This. So much this. I love it when I get in conversations with people and we go off and write something and then we come back and bounce off each other again and go write something different. It's the best kind of chemistry for me.

I do not write fanfic with the idea that I'm going to be a published author one day. I don't feel any particular ownership of my stories and I fail to understand how anyone in this day and age can feel like they have control of anything once they put it up on the world wide web.

One of the things I love most about fandom is the interactivity, the connectivity. If I didn't want that, I wouldn't be in fandom.

Um, yeah. I'll quit talking now. (I've skirted around the edges of fandom since 2003 when I got my LJ account, but didn't become a member of fandom until almost two years ago).

[podcath]

I'm with you on loving the interactivity. For me responding to the source text is only a small part of fandom. It's the shared love and the bouncing ideas off one another and the feedback and, yes, the transformations of transformative art :D

[podcath]

Only 10 days late. headdesk!

and yes, I love that rule of thumb. It totally represents the fandom I got to know and feel connected with. I know people hate the cult of nice but, frankly, a bit of empathy and just being polite goes a long way :)

*hangs with you in the old fans' place*

[montanaharper]

Also, looking back at what I wrote, I kind of want to clarify that 'when I got into fandom' actually means 'when I got into slash fandom online,' because I started going to local SF/Fantasy cons in 1983, when I was 14 (and my parents are media fans, so I really kind of grew up in a fannish culture).

I know people hate the cult of nice but, frankly, a bit of empathy and just being polite goes a long way :)

Oddly, I used to be much more against what I perceived as the cult of nice. The older I get, though, the more I realize that so many versions of 'keeping it real' and 'being honest,' etc. etc. etc., are actually just a way of saying 'get away with being an asshole.'

[superstitiousme]

oh you know, just casually finding this post 3+ months later and replying. thanks for writing this up, i really enjoyed reading it and thinking thoughts about it.

many of these ideas hit home with things that have been on my mind for a while now. it does sometimes feel as though the fourth wall is really a one-sided mirror, and how we behave and/or how we create art and share that work is held to a much different standard on this side of it.

i recently watched a series of videos that made me think and were generally very informative and interesting. here is the website, maybe you've watched them too? http://www.everythingisaremix.info/watch-the-series/

If we think about what we get out of creating fanworks, it's probably safe to say that the most valuable currency in fandom is acknowledgement of our work. it's maybe not the only thing we get out of what we do, but it's easily the most traded currency in fandom.

That said, my personal belief is that fan to fan transformative works do not prohibit, limit or otherwise harm the original fan artist, ie: it does not keep them from receiving or diminish previously received acknowledgement of their work. In fact, transformative works (when credited) tend to send even more fans to the source material which can lead to an even greater acknowledgment of the original work than was first received.

(if uncredited, i suppose the original fanperson could be said to have been harmed in not receiving any further acknowledgment of their original work since in all probability they could receive new acknowledgement as a result of the transformative work if properly credited. but that's sort of a weird since without the transformative work they wouldn't necessarily be getting any further acknowledgement anyway, so it's a bit too muddy for my liking and i'll just hand wave it for now, lol.)

You are correct that name and reputation is all we have as fans. The possibility that any (or some) derivatives of a person's fanworks could affect that reputation is a potential problem in terms of policies and procedures in fandom culture. The enforcement of permission etiquette is one way fandom has tried to solve this problem, by leaving power/control up to the original fanartist. however i personally find it very limiting and stifling as a fanartist, especially in terms of podficcing stories i did not write, but certainly also in terms of "policing" anyone who would create transformative works based on something i have created (how tedious).

Of course it will all sort itself out in the end, fandom culture is a constantly evolving organism and whatnot. I'm just watching it from the sidelines totally fascinated, and maybe especially because of how it's affecting more mainstream societal views about art currency. for example, i came across on tumblr the other day and found it very interesting: http://blog.ted.com/2013/02/27/trust-people-to-pay-for-music-amanda-palmer-at-ted2013/

[podcath]

Hey :) If you're 3 months late in commenting, I'm more than double that in replying :)

Anyway, thanks for your engaged comment and thank you for the links! I do find your comment about how fan culture can affect mainstream culture really interesting! Henry Jenkins has called this convergence culture, and really, the clear distinctions we've tried to maintain between pro and fan dont' work for certain mediums (comics, indy bands, etc), plus, of course, industry has purposefully started using fan engagements to model their own (paying fans to disseminate the goods so to speak). And then there's the disappearance of the fourth wall and the dangers of twitter--as many a star have learned.

So, I think you're right that the only thing that remains constant is change, and every rule we set, every post on etiquette we make, may be obsolete 3 or 6 or 9 months later :)