Fanlib
I'm continuing to follow the Fanlib debacle. Why? Well, partially cuz I like a good shitstorm as much as the next person. Partially because I think the legal issues involved are interesting. And partially because I despise Fanlib and want them to catch fire and sink into the ocean.
These people are asshats. I doubt their TOS is going to truly immunize them from liability if one of their authors gets sued; I know it doesn't go that far usually, they'd get a C&D first and if they complied, no lawsuit. BUT to trust their liability limitation to a TOS like that? Beyond stupid. You think anyone would even bother suing one of the authors? Sure, they might name them as a co-defendant, but they are going to be suing Fanlib's stupid ass, because that's who has the money and is actually hosting the copyright violations. What about the fact that so many fanfic authors are minors, who cannot make legal agreements and waive rights as the TOS demands they must? What about plagarists who steal from other fanfics, by authors who have not submitted to your TOS? Every time I look at this issue I find new liabilities for them.
And that's besides the fact that they are transparently attempting to strip fanfic authors of copyrights that they arguably don't possess anyway. You can't own IP rights for something that is a violation of someone else's IP! It just doesn't work that way. There's never been a case on point, so it's an open question as to whether fanfic is a violation of copyright. Myself, under the current law I think it clearly is. Whether or not a fanfic author/archive is making a profit on their work may have an effect on a copyright owner's decision to attack, but there is no requirement that you be profitting in some way for your copyright violation to be actionable. Although I must say, I think a corporation that is brazenly trying to make profiting off fanfic its entire business plan is much more likely to be sued than Joe or Jane Fanficcer...and if so, I think a ruling in that case could have a dramatic legal impact on your everyday fanfic writer. (If it even got to trial- most of these things get settled, so it's not worth having a panic attack over or anything.)
Aside from stealing your work and getting you sued if you sign up (and causing a wanksplosion) I don't think Fanlib is likely to have much of an impact on fandom culture as a whole. It's simply too BIG for one pissant company to do much. It's big and it's expansive and it's free and there are a billion places to post fanfic; how can Fanlib compete with that? It may be the only business of its kind but that only appeals to an investor- from a fan's point of view it's one among the many, and for those who pay attention it's clearly inferior. We have plenty of options for giving away our work for free, thanks. There's no way a business like Fanlib can succeed in subsuming or transforming fanfic on a massive scale without a monopoly.
That's why I think they WILL fail. Now let's address why I WANT them to fail.
At first I was just sort of vaguely concerned about the legal issues. But after reading their brochure, it became crystal clear that Fanlib is not just a bunch of tact-poor buffoons with a crappy business plan; rather, they are tact-poor buffoons who are presenting an entirely different business plan to fanfic authors than they are to their backers. See, I have this thing about people who try to trick me. Or to trick "my kind" as it were. What these people are doing is not just stupid, it's fundamentally dishonest: they are trying to make nice with the fan community and encourage us to contribute our work to their website by branding it as a community by fans, for fans, while at the same time marketing the website to their financial backers as a low-cost creative mill where writers labor for free and their work can easily be harvested and marketed to the public.
I don't think I have to explain to anyone here how that's inherently at odds with the notion of fanfiction held by the vaster than vast majority of fandom.
Really, it's just sickening (though not surprising) that there will always be this subset of people that look at things like fanfiction, or fandom, or the internet, and say, "Hmm, how can we harness this for our own financial gain?" Keep in mind that even if you are one of the people who believe fanfiction is a sort of glorified theft and do not approve, that this is not fanfiction being reclaimed by authors/creators or even the companies to which they owe their allegiance: this is Fanlib, a company which owns no copyrights and produces nothing, stepping in to milk both the copyright owners AND the fanfic authors.
I really think that this is an enterprise doomed to fail. I can't wait. But sometimes the success of seemingly unworkable bullshit companies can take us by surprise, so I retain a vague undercurrent of worry that Fanlib might, somehow, succeed.
So anyway. If you, too, care, there's apparently a comm for this now (LJ has a comm for everything). Ignore the histrionics and stick to the meaty posts with cross-links and updates on what's going down.
These people are asshats. I doubt their TOS is going to truly immunize them from liability if one of their authors gets sued; I know it doesn't go that far usually, they'd get a C&D first and if they complied, no lawsuit. BUT to trust their liability limitation to a TOS like that? Beyond stupid. You think anyone would even bother suing one of the authors? Sure, they might name them as a co-defendant, but they are going to be suing Fanlib's stupid ass, because that's who has the money and is actually hosting the copyright violations. What about the fact that so many fanfic authors are minors, who cannot make legal agreements and waive rights as the TOS demands they must? What about plagarists who steal from other fanfics, by authors who have not submitted to your TOS? Every time I look at this issue I find new liabilities for them.
And that's besides the fact that they are transparently attempting to strip fanfic authors of copyrights that they arguably don't possess anyway. You can't own IP rights for something that is a violation of someone else's IP! It just doesn't work that way. There's never been a case on point, so it's an open question as to whether fanfic is a violation of copyright. Myself, under the current law I think it clearly is. Whether or not a fanfic author/archive is making a profit on their work may have an effect on a copyright owner's decision to attack, but there is no requirement that you be profitting in some way for your copyright violation to be actionable. Although I must say, I think a corporation that is brazenly trying to make profiting off fanfic its entire business plan is much more likely to be sued than Joe or Jane Fanficcer...and if so, I think a ruling in that case could have a dramatic legal impact on your everyday fanfic writer. (If it even got to trial- most of these things get settled, so it's not worth having a panic attack over or anything.)
Aside from stealing your work and getting you sued if you sign up (and causing a wanksplosion) I don't think Fanlib is likely to have much of an impact on fandom culture as a whole. It's simply too BIG for one pissant company to do much. It's big and it's expansive and it's free and there are a billion places to post fanfic; how can Fanlib compete with that? It may be the only business of its kind but that only appeals to an investor- from a fan's point of view it's one among the many, and for those who pay attention it's clearly inferior. We have plenty of options for giving away our work for free, thanks. There's no way a business like Fanlib can succeed in subsuming or transforming fanfic on a massive scale without a monopoly.
That's why I think they WILL fail. Now let's address why I WANT them to fail.
At first I was just sort of vaguely concerned about the legal issues. But after reading their brochure, it became crystal clear that Fanlib is not just a bunch of tact-poor buffoons with a crappy business plan; rather, they are tact-poor buffoons who are presenting an entirely different business plan to fanfic authors than they are to their backers. See, I have this thing about people who try to trick me. Or to trick "my kind" as it were. What these people are doing is not just stupid, it's fundamentally dishonest: they are trying to make nice with the fan community and encourage us to contribute our work to their website by branding it as a community by fans, for fans, while at the same time marketing the website to their financial backers as a low-cost creative mill where writers labor for free and their work can easily be harvested and marketed to the public.
I don't think I have to explain to anyone here how that's inherently at odds with the notion of fanfiction held by the vaster than vast majority of fandom.
Really, it's just sickening (though not surprising) that there will always be this subset of people that look at things like fanfiction, or fandom, or the internet, and say, "Hmm, how can we harness this for our own financial gain?" Keep in mind that even if you are one of the people who believe fanfiction is a sort of glorified theft and do not approve, that this is not fanfiction being reclaimed by authors/creators or even the companies to which they owe their allegiance: this is Fanlib, a company which owns no copyrights and produces nothing, stepping in to milk both the copyright owners AND the fanfic authors.
I really think that this is an enterprise doomed to fail. I can't wait. But sometimes the success of seemingly unworkable bullshit companies can take us by surprise, so I retain a vague undercurrent of worry that Fanlib might, somehow, succeed.
So anyway. If you, too, care, there's apparently a comm for this now (LJ has a comm for everything). Ignore the histrionics and stick to the meaty posts with cross-links and updates on what's going down.