Negotiating copyright in online creative spaces: how Canadian fan writers navigate and learn about law

The Internet makes it easier than ever for users to access, transform or "remix", and distribute content. This technological and cultural revolution makes creators of us all - and makes copyright more relevant to more people. However, despite the ease of creating and sharing media online (as opposed to simply consuming: see Lessig, 2004), public copyright literacy has not necessarily increased. Amateur online creators typically lack formal copyright training, which may lead to legal misunderstandings or concerns, as well as an amateur-grown culture of informal copyright norms for negotiating the law. This research uses fan fiction writers as one example of online creators. Fan fiction refers to stories based on identifiable segments of popular culture, such as books, movies, or TV shows (Tushnet, 1997). Fan fiction is typically amateur-written and shared in free online communities. Fan fiction writers are one among many online subcultures who create second-generation works drawing on pre-existing media, and who are therefore copyright stakeholders. Prior research with fan creators indicates that copyright norms are prevalent in fan communities. Norms may track or integrate legal doctrine to varying degrees; however, misinformation also circulates in fan spaces, as creators may refer to peer sources and find legal texts inaccessible (Fiesler, Bruckman, 2014; Fiesler et al, 2015; Freund, 2014). This presentation reports on the author's preliminary dissertation findings regarding fan writers. It is interdisciplinary, drawing on scholarship in law, information studies, and fan studies. It presents a literature review of the subject as well as results from a pilot study and early qualitative interviews addressing how Canadian fans negotiate copyright. This research adds a Canadian perspective to the literature on online creators' copyright knowledge, research, and needs. It also adds further qualitative data about how stakeholders outside law, libraries, and traditional publishing negotiate copyright law in a global, digital context

No shame to play: Ludic prosumption on Brazilian fanvideos

Purpose – Fans are proactive consumers of pop culture products, who can be seen as prosumers. Fanvideo production is one of their most widespread practices in the participatory culture scenario. Thus, the aim of the present study is to analyze how ludic prosumption is featured on plays performed in Brazilian fanvideos based on successful pop culture franchises.Design/methodology/approach – Research based on the interpretive content analysis of fanvideos of plays produced by Brazilian fans based on five emblematic pop culture franchises and published on YouTube.Findings – Results have shown six play types in the analyzed fanvideos – i.e. child’s play, performing powers, cosplay, play in social rites, teaching to play and “zu^era” –, which revealed a way of having fun in different situations through different practices based on ludic consumption experiences in different spheres of social life.Originality/value – CCT-based studies focused on investigating plays as ludic consumption phenomenon, as well as fan culture, remain at early research stage. Thus, the main contribution of the present study lies on associating such concepts based on the concept of prosumption

In Support of Tolerated Use: Rethinking Harms, Moral Rights and Remedies in Australian Copyright Law

In this article, we propose a thought experiment: what if copyright law could better incorporate social and cultural norms around content engagement and re-use? We draw on empirical research that explores the norms of different creative communities when they re- use the work of others, and the norms of consumers around sharing. We outline how both creators and copyright users engage almost daily in small-scale infringement that does not substitute or disrupt copyright owners’ established markets, either because the uses are highly transformative, or personal and unremarkable. We suggest that copyright could better reflect these norms if both norms and moral rights were considered as part of a remedies assessment. We propose that in cases where work has been attributed and treated with integrity, and where the use does not directly cause economic harm to the copyright owner, courts should award only nominal damages and decline to order injunctive relief

Internet Safe Harbors and the Transformation of Copyright Law

This Article explores the potential displacement of substantive copyright law in the increasingly important online environment. In 1998, Congress enacted a system of intermediary safe harbors as part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The internet safe harbors and the associated system of notice-and-takedown fundamentally changed the incentives of platforms, users, and rightsholders in relation to claims of copyright infringement. These different incentives interact to yield a functional balance of copyright online that diverges markedly from the experience of copyright law in traditional media environments. More recently, private agreements between rightsholders and large commercial internet platforms have been made in the shadow of those safe harbors. These “DMCA-plus” agreements relate to automatic copyright filtering systems, such as YouTube\u27s Content ID, that not only return platforms to their gatekeeping role, but encode that role in algorithms and software. The normative implications of these developments are contestable. Fair use and other axioms of copyright law still nominally apply online, but in practice, the safe harbors and private agreements made in the shadow of those safe harbors are now far more important determinants of online behavior than whether that conduct is, or is not, substantively in compliance with copyright law. Substantive copyright law is not necessarily irrelevant online, but its relevance is indirect and contingent. The attenuated relevance of substantive copyright law to online expression has benefits and costs that appear fundamentally incommensurable. Compared to the offline world, online platforms are typically more permissive of infringement, and more open to new and unexpected speech and new forms of cultural participation. However, speech on these platforms is also more vulnerable to overreaching claims by rightsholders. There is no easy metric for comparing the value of noninfringing expression enabled by the safe harbors to that which has been unjustifiably suppressed by misuse of the notice-and-takedown system. Likewise, the harm that copyright infringement does to rightsholders is not easy to calculate, nor is it easy to weigh against the many benefits of the safe harbors. DMCA-plus agreements raise additional incommensurable potential costs and benefits. Automatic copyright enforcement systems have obvious advantages for both platforms and rightsholders: they may reduce the harm of copyright infringement; they may also allow platforms to be more hospitable to certain types of user content. However, automated enforcement systems may also place an undue burden on fair use and other forms of noninfringing speech. The design of copyright enforcement robots encodes a series of policy choices made by platforms and rightsholders and, as a result, subjects online speech and cultural participation to a new layer of private ordering and control. In the future, private interests, not public policy, will determine the conditions under which users get to participate in online platforms that adopt these systems. In a world where communication and expression is policed by copyright robots, the substantive content of copyright law matters only to the extent that those with power decide that it should matter

Internet Safe Harbors and the Transformation of Copyright Law

This Article explores the potential displacement of substantive copyright law in the increasingly important online environment. In 1998, Congress enacted a system of intermediary safe harbors as part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The internet safe harbors and the associated system of notice-and-takedown fundamentally changed the incentives of platforms, users, and rightsholders in relation to claims of copyright infringement. These different incentives interact to yield a functional balance of copyright online that diverges markedly from the experience of copyright law in traditional media environments. More recently, private agreements between rightsholders and large commercial internet platforms have been made in the shadow of those safe harbors. These “DMCA-plus” agreements relate to automatic copyright filtering systems, such as YouTube’s Content ID, that not only return platforms to their gatekeeping role, but encode that role in algorithms and software. The normative implications of these developments are contestable. Fair use and other axioms of copyright law still nominally apply online, but in practice, the safe harbors and private agreements made in the shadow of those safe harbors are now far more important determinants of online behavior than whether that conduct is, or is not, substantively in compliance with copyright law. Substantive copyright law is not necessarily irrelevant online, but its relevance is indirect and contingent. The attenuated relevance of substantive copyright law to online expression has benefits and costs that appear fundamentally incommensurable. Compared to the offline world, online platforms are typically more permissive of infringement, and more open to new and unexpected speech and new forms of cultural participation. However, speech on these platforms is also more vulnerable to overreaching claims by rightsholders. There is no easy metric for comparing the value of noninfringing expression enabled by the safe harbors to that which has been unjustifiably suppressed by misuse of the notice-and-takedown system. Likewise, the harm that copyright infringement does to rightsholders is not easy to calculate, nor is it easy to weigh against the many benefits of the safe harbors. DMCA-plus agreements raise additional incommensurable potential costs and benefits. Automatic copyright enforcement systems have obvious advantages for both platforms and rightsholders: they may reduce the harm of copyright infringement; they may also allow platforms to be more hospitable to certain types of user content. However, automated enforcement systems may also place an undue burden on fair use and other forms of noninfringing speech. The design of copyright enforcement robots encodes a series of policy choices made by platforms and rightsholders and, as a result, subjects online speech and cultural participation to a new layer of private ordering and control. In the future, private interests, not public policy, will determine the conditions under which users get to participate in online platforms that adopt these systems. In a world where communication and expression is policed by copyright robots, the substantive content of copyright law matters only to the extent that those with power decide that it should matter

The effects of evolving fan practices on the revival of Doctor Who

In the nearly 60 years since Doctor Who first aired in 1963, fandom and fan practices have not only evolved, but moved into the mainstream culture. Collecting and preserving information, and creating melodramatic fanfiction that explores the emotions of the characters, are now commonplace practices across a wide number of properties. This thesis examines this intersection between fandom and industry production using Doctor Who as a case study. Throughout Doctor Who’s original run, fans focused on archival practices as means of preserving the series. Today, fans draw on these archives to both watch and rewatch the series, which has led to an increased emphasis on continuity and the history of both the series and the characters. Fanworks, such as fanfiction often added dimension to the characters, exploring their emotions and psychology. This fan influence, in conjunction with the growing influence of American melodrama and seriality on television, can be seen in the Doctor Who revival. Additionally, the fans themselves who grew up watching the original series have become industry professionals who use their status as fans both in production and in the marketing of the series as a means of authentication as experts who best understand the property. Ultimately, I demonstrate how fandom and fan practices can color production and what that means for the television industry

More Than Movies: Social Formations in Informal Networks of Media Sharing

This project examines the social structures, formations, and practices of informal networks of media sharing (INMSs) through both historical and sociological lenses. INMSs are comprised of individuals who distribute and circulate media to one another through noncommercial, unauthorized networks. The networks can be centered around texts, such as the early videophile publication The Videophile’s Newsletter, or they can be constituted by disparate groups of people who come together as a community using digital platforms like BitTorrent. While nominally concerned with circulating media, INMSs are also sources of social sustenance for their members and are sites of struggle for social and symbolic capital and power. They illuminate the complex ways in which community members utilize media as a starting point to satisfy a variety of needs, including developing bodies of cultural and technical knowledge, thinking through legal and ethical concerns, creating social bonds, and engaging in a variety of pedagogical practices. In short, INMSs are loci of social and cultural meaning-making for their members. This dissertation catalogs and analyzes the social practices and formations of three INMSs, the aforementioned Videophile’s Newsletter and two private, BitTorrent networks focused on cinema, Great Cinema and FilmDestruction, showing there to be diachronic and transplatform similarities between different networks. Rather than instances of rupture and divergence, this project argues that these networks are best understood through an evolutionary lens. It contends that INMSs and other similar formations should be increasingly studied because of their prevalence throughout the 20th and 21st centuries and their importance to consumers as unauthorized media distribution spaces whereby network members have greater latitude to experiment with media and create unique, diverse social structures and practices that are not contingent upon restrictions imposed by the media and copyright industries

The Informal Screen Media Economy of Ukraine

This research explores informal film translation (voice over and subtitling) and distribution (pirate streaming and torrenting) practices in Ukraine, which together comprise what I call the informal screen media economy of Ukraine. This study addresses wider issues of debate around the distinct reasons media piracy exists in non-Western economies. There is already a considerable body of research on piracy outside of the traditional anti-piracy discourse, one that recognises that informal media are not all unequivocally destructive nor that they are necessarily marginal, particularly in non-Western countries. Yet, there remain gaps in the range of geographies and specific types of pirate practices being studied. Furthermore, academics often insufficiently address the intricate conditions of the context within which a given pirate activity is undertaken. Finally, whereas many researchers talk about pirates, considerably fewer talk to them. This project sets out to address these gaps. Specifically, I examine the distinct practicalities of the informal screen media practices in Ukraine through netnographic observations of pirate sites and in-depth interviews with the Ukrainian informal screen media practitioners. I explore their notably diverse motivations for engaging in these activities and how they negotiate their practices with the complex economic, cultural, and regulatory context of Ukraine. I find that, contrary to common perceptions, the Ukrainian pirates do not oppose the copyright law but operate largely within and around it. A more important factor in piracy in Ukraine instead is the economics of the Ukrainian language. This is reflected in the language exclusivity inherent to most Ukrainian pirate distribution platforms as well as in the motives of some informal translators, for whom their practice is a form of language activism. Overall, I argue for a more holistic approach to researching the informal space of the media economy, especially in non-Western contexts, one that recognises the heterogeneity of this space and explores accordingly intricate factors behind its existence. In addition, this project offers a methodological contribution by providing a detailed reflection on the use of ethnographic methods to study a pirate economy in a non-Western, non-anglophone country