DTC 356 Final Project : Fanfiction and Fair Use Laws

 The Wonderful World of Fanfiction Justification Paper

I decided to focus my final project on the ideas and issues raised when we spent time studying fan fiction, Mary Sues, and how they fit in with copyright law. Fan fiction was very important to me in junior high. I never thought I could write creatively, and I never thought I would like writing creatively. The group of friends I hung out with wrote fan fiction, and introduced me to it, so I started to write it for a while as well. I eventually got bored with it, and moved on to writing my own stories, but it was still like a gateway to writing for me. Due to this, I have always found the struggle of fan fiction and copy write law interesting, as that was always a big debate, and one that I had followed when I was actively writing it.

I decided for my project to create an informative website. This website is aimed toward several different types of people. The first type would be anyone who did not know what fan fiction was, and was curious about learning some of its basic aspects. The next type of person might be a fan fiction author that is brand new, and wanted to learn some information about the subject. The other type of person might be someone who already writes fan fiction, but would be interested to learn exactly how copyright plays into fan fiction.

In this website, I included a variety of different types of information. I start with a brief history of fan fiction in its modern incarnation. It started with Star Trek in the modern days, although when I was researching, I found that fan fiction is actually much older, and has been around as long as stories have themselves. Then I move to how fan fiction and copyright law interact with each other. I gave viewpoints of authors and the two sides of why they might support, or not support fan fiction, and some examples of authors for each side.  I also discuss the concept of the culture that has been created around fan fiction, and Mary Sues. I give examples of Mary Sues, and varying degrees of them. The last part of the website is links to popular fan fiction websites, and a works cited page for where I obtained the images on the website, and my information.

I created the website on Wix.com. I did not use one of their preset templates; I just chose to build it off of blank pages. This way I could customize it and make it the way that I wanted to. I decided that I wanted it to look like someone’s notebook, and notes on the subject. In order to achieve this, I took a picture of a blank page in my own notebook, and used that as the background. I chose a font for the text that looked like basic, or note taking handwriting. For the images, I made them looked like pieces of film. Then I added images that looked like tape, to indicate that they were added into the notebook, like adding pieces to a scrapbook.

I mainly based my ideas, and retrieved my information from the article we read entitled “Everyone’s a superhero: A cultural theory of Mary Sue fan fiction, and its fair use” written by, Anupam Chander, and Madhavi Sunder. I found it interesting to read the ideas on the evolution of the Mary Sue, and how it has spread and changing through time. In article, it is brought up that “In the past, Mary Sue authors might have stashed what they penned in a drawer, distributed Xeroxed copies, or, at most, published their work in an underground magazine. The World Wide Web offers writers a relatively inexpensive and simple mass distribution vehicle. Posting a story to a fan fiction website is literally free, at least for those with access to the Internet.” ( Chander 600  ). In today’s world, for those that have access to computers and the Internet, it is so easy to obtain fan fiction and post it. This has turned it much more mainstreamed than it ever has before.

Of course, this means that there are more issues with it brought to the attentions of society. Especially in recent years it has drastically changed. For instance, as I discuss a bit on my website, there is a move by digital publishing corporations to turn a profit with fan fiction. The forerunner of this is Amazon, and the applications they have set up for the Kindle. A new platform called Kindle Worlds has been created. This platform allows for fan fiction writers to actually sell their stories. ( ). The way this works is that the fan fiction author gets a percentage of the profits from their story. Amazon also gets a percentage. The original author of the text, Production Company of the movie, or developer of the game, etc. would also get royalties. In the future, if this concept catches on, there will no doubt be even bigger debates on the concept of fan fiction and copyright. Copyright exists to protect the financial interests of the original creator. In the past fan fiction has been accepted because it makes no money. If all of the sudden fan fiction is making money for the fan fiction author, this dramatically changes the game, forever.

Fan fiction has always been debated though in terms of copyright law. In their essay, Chander and Sunder explain that “Mary Sues that challenge the orthodox representations in the original work should constitute fair use under U.S. copyright law” ( Chander 601).  There have been in the past debates as to how fan fiction is legal, or if it is even legal at all. Many of the debates surround whether it can be considered a part of the fair use laws.  There are questions about whether people should write their own stories or continue to write stories based off of others ideas. All in all, fan fiction is a topic that will only become more interesting as technology and digital reading technology evolves, and even original works become completely digital.

Works Cited

"Kindle Worlds." Kindle Worlds. Amazon, n.d. Web. 4 May 2014. <https://kindleworlds.amazon.com/>.

Chander, Anupam and Sunder, Madhavi, Everyone's a Superhero: A Cultural Theory of 'Mary Sue' Fan Fiction as Fair Use. California Law Review, Vol. 95, p. 597, 2007; UC Davis Legal Studies Research Paper No. 110. SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=984919

Final Project Website : 

 The Wonderful World of Fanfiction ~~~  http://kmtartist.wix.com/wwoffanfic

DTC 375 Final blog entry --- DTC Showcase

Each year that I have been to he DTC show case, I am always blown away by the animations. I know how hard they are, as I took both the beginning and advanced animation classes. I can appreciate the hard work, planning, frustration, and time that goes into them. at the DTC showcase,  all of the animations where great. My favorite however was the one that was a spoof of Minecraft. I personally

have never played the game Minecraft, but I am a friend with people that do, and so I know the premise well enough. I thought that visually, that animation was spot on. With its pixelated and blocky style, a mine craft animation done in that way is a wise choice. It would allow the animator to create visuals and models that look like the original game. These looked professional and well made. The actual animation was spot on as well.

            Another project that I really liked was the Ski video. The video was super well edited, and it was fun to watch. I always admire people that edit films together from a lot of footage like they did. It is a huge challenge, and I learned that last semester in DTC 354 when I was creating my final video. I made it as an inside look at being in marching band. I had a camera running for five of the games and

practices, and other times. It was a huge challenge to pair down the footage so it could fit perfectly into a four-minute video. In their video, I loved how the music synced really well with the visuals. There was also a lot of energy in the movie, and color, or the lack of color was used fantastically. Though we only got to see a few minutes of it, I would watch the rest as well.

            The DTC showcase was awesome. It was really cool to see the projects that people were working on. It is sort of inspiration to continue to strive for improvement in my own work. It was also interesting to see everyone else’s final games, and to see ours finally completed. I can’t wait to see what is included net year, as each year, there are cooler, and cooler projects shown.

DTC 356 Blog #6 .... The Final Take Aways

The most important take away concept of this unit is that our current system of copyright and ownership is not working in our evolving digital society. We learned that the copyright system as we know it today was created for the authors of print media long ago. It was explained in Many articles including  the article “The Musician as Thief : Digital culture and copyright law” by Daphne Keller, that  copyright was set up so that they could make a living off of their creation, and not have to worry about other creators stealing their work and claiming it as their own to make money off of it themselves. This is what it was originally intended for, after the death of the author, the copyright existed to help the family, and then it was no more.

            That being said, as the world evolved and changed in the way society values creations, so has the copyright system. As many of the creations ended up being absorbed into corporations, the copyright laws have changed to favor them. The copyright law changed to the life of the author plus 70

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years. This was changed because of the Disney Corporation. Relatively recently, the characters of Mickey, Minnie and their friends were about to go into the public domain, as they were created by the Disney corporation’s founder, Walt Disney many years ago. However, the corporation refused to let them go, as they are an iconic part of their business…so they were able to get the copy write law changed to an extended period of time. This bought them time until they could get the laws changed to allow businesses to hold the copyright of an item.

You see, at the moment, American Copy Write Law is set up to favor the individual. This excludes corporations, and organizations, no matter what their nature. This has caused issues not only for corporations, but for cultural institutions as well. Copyright does not protect any content if more than one person created it, especially if that content was created long ago. This issue applies to indigenous groups all around the world. Their cultural content, such as symbols, stories, songs, and artifacts cannot be covered by copyright. Due to this, many have been used in ways that are not only inappropriate to how they are supposed to be used, but completely without permission.

This often happens by corporations, and they do not share any of the profits with the groups that created the content. As they are a group that cannot usually pin down who created the original content, it cannot be copyrighted. An example of this is the Maori tribe of New Zealand. In the video “ Guarding the Family Silver” it was discussed how the cultural content of their society was technically in the public domain, and so it was used, improperly and without permission in many different applications. These included T-shirts, car designs, video games and toys. One of the main examples was the Bionicle Toys. These toys used names and other aspects of the culture freely. It turned out that they were being used in a highly inappropriate way. It took a lot of force to get the company to comply and fix these issues.

 In a video game discussed in the movie, there was another instance of inappropriate use. Traditional female chin tattoos where placed on a male character. While it may be a challenge to stop the use of these cultural pieces of content, we need to change the way our society views copyright to aid in the groups that they originated from. While the ultimate goal is a form of true group copyright holdings, the goal for the near future is a set of restrictions on the copyright, such as the Mukurtu program that is discussed in the Jane Anderson video. While a program like Mukurtu does not give the groups copyright of the content, it does allow them to set restrictions on who can see and access what type of information. This would be to insure that the songs, rituals, symbols, etc. are used in an appropriate way.  They would ensure that anyone accessing the information had the correct credentials, such as being initiated up to a certain point, or was the correct gender. While this does not solve the issue of who gains the economic control of sensitive content, it does help to control how that content is used.

            However, there are issues with the copyright system as a whole for non-indigenous content. As of right now, the copyright program is rigid at best, t does not allow for the creator to do anything but take the copyright. This becomes problematic for the creation of new content. Building off of old content creates new content. It has been this way since before the digital age. After all, as Daphne Keller, says in her article, “New art builds on old art.”  However, the current copyright system does not allow this. There is a program working to fight this, called Creative Commons. Creative Commons allows the author of the content to explain how much copyright they want. They can say that their content must be used with attribution, or no commercial involvement, the list goes on and on.

            It is important to have a culture where individuals are comfortable sharing their work. The laws need to be equitable, and fair for all parties involved. That way, our society can move forward. Our society is like Legos, we build off of what has come before us.

DTC 375 blog # 9 Cameras in the 1990's to Today

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When reading chapter ten, Snap Shot, I began thinking about cameras, and how much there technology and role in society has changed since I was a little kid. I remember when I was little my parents had a camera; of course it took roles of film. Each role of film held twenty some pictures. When we would go somewhere, or have a family get together, my mom would come prepared with a couple roles of film to switch out. Even with that however, you were very careful with what you

photographed, as you were very limited on how many pictures you could take, and film was expensive. It was expensive to get the film

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developed as well. I had a plastic fisher Pryce camera that used real film! But I dropped it, and it broke… that was a sad day in first grade. After that, I would save my allowance, and purchase a disposable camera before an exciting event.

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 I remember the first time we went to Disneyland, it was 2001, and they had an hour photo lab on Main Street in the park. That way a family could develop their film and get the pictures back so they could see what was on the film before they left. With digital cameras, and instantly being able to see the image on the camera, that little shop is no longer. When Digital cameras were just becoming popular, we did not have one, but my little brother’s friend’s family did. My mom took a picture of them together in kindergarten in 2003 with our film camera, and his little friend wanted to “ see it” he didn’t understand that non digital cameras did not have the ability to call up pictures for viewing. A little earlier, when my brother was a toddler, my mother went through several roles film trying to get the perfect picture of us for a Christmas photo to send out with her annual letter.

Of course now, that wouldn’t be an issue… all we would need is a digital camera with a memory card. I remember in middle school everyone had digital cameras, and they took them everywhere, even school. This was true in high school as well. Then all of the sudden with the creation

of the smart phone, digital cameras stopped being brought to school. It was easier just to take pictures
with the phone. The smart phone had accomplished what the other cellphones before had failed at… it provided a good quality camera, just as good as a digital camera, and an easy way to remove the pictures to a computer. If they just used their digital camera casually before, many people I know don’t even use theirs anymore. The last time I went on a trip, I just used my IPhone as a camera.