In evidenza

2012 is becoming the year of legislation and legal actions regarding Internet use. Earlier this year, proposed U.S. legislation known as SOPA and PIPA were shelved as a result of public outrage. Other actions were taken around the globe to protest ACTA, an international treaty still veiled in secrecy that also threatened to curtail the general public's activities and usage of online services.

The latest controversial piece of legislation on this front is the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), which was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives on November 30, 2011 and has just been passed. Numerous groups are opposed to the bill such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Library Association, Free Press, and Canadian Internet Policy. The bill is also opposed by various politicans from President Obama to Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul, but is supported by companies such as telecom carriers Verizon, U.S. Telecom, and Sprint, and tech companies such as Facebook, Symantec, IBM and Oracle. The U.S. Senate has its own version of the bill which was previously endorsed by the White House, so it's still unclear in what form the bill may pass the Senate and whether or not that might be signed by President Obama.

The Center for Democracy and Technology, which is opposed to CISPA, lists various problems with the legislation as it's currently drafted:

1) CISPA has a very broad, almost unlimited definition of the information that can be shared with government agencies and it supersedes all other privacy laws.
2) CISPA is likely to lead to expansion of the government’s role in the monitoring of private communications.
3) CISPA is likely to shift control of government cybersecurity efforts from civilian agencies to the military.
4) Once the information is shared with the government, it wouldn’t have to be used for cybersecurity, but could instead be used for other purposes.

Given the Internet's current infrastructure, anything that affects Internet traffic in the U.S. can have implications for Internet freedoms around the globe. While some in the U.S. have decided to protest CISPA by drowning legislators in personal content, those who oppose the bill can also take a more traditional approach.

A more encouraging story about online regulation has come from Australia, where their High Court refused to hold ISPs accountable for illegal downloading done through their services. The AFACT v. iiNet appeal was unanimously dismissed, with the court deciding against the case brought by movie companies including Australian branches of Hollywood studios Universal Pictures, Warner Bros. and 20th Century Fox.

Holding providers liable for content posted or transmitted through their service has been a common tactic by content creators, whether of films or music. During the past week YouTube lost a court case in Germany where it was sued for royalties, and the court decided it "had not done enough to stop copyrighted clips being posted." Such cases are likely to continue around the globe in an effort to stifle consumer posting and transmission of content that music and film industry associations consider to be in violation of their ownership rights.

Fanworks come in many shapes and sizes, including fan art, fan video of all flavours, fan fic, fan craft, and more! And many fans' work is the labour of love of collecting fanworks and giving them a home. Some collections of fanworks are themed and moderated, others welcome all comers, but they're all special and represent lots of work on the part of their mods and maintainers. Zine editors, vid librarians, archive mods, and all the other wonderful people who give homes to collections of fanworks so that other fans can share in their delights, we value your endeavours!

One of the things that makes fandom special is the way that it makes a home in all sorts of diverse places. We love the diversity of fannish homes, from small town zine collections stored in a dedicated fan's bottom drawer, to vast online archives filled with a variety of different fanworks. But sometimes fannish collections need a new home — and that's where our Open Doors committee comes in.

When the code for an online archive is stuttering and dying, or a zine collection has grown too large for one fan to house, or the maintainers of a much-loved archive have moved on to a new fandom, or left fandom entirely, or left this life, Open Doors steps in (on request, of course!) to save fanworks and collections of fanworks from disappearing.

Sometimes this means opening our doors to physical fanworks. In collaboration with the University of Iowa, our Fan Culture Preservation Project preserves fannish ephemera such as zines, fannish flyers, paper memorabilia, and con programs. Among the collections we've preserved so far are the Fanzine Archives and the Morgan Dawn Fanzine and Fanvid Collection.

And sometimes it means opening our doors to digital fanworks. For online archives which need a new home, our Open Doors Special Collections Project imports at-risk archives onto the Archive of Our Own. We successfully ran our first test case for our mass importer in early 2012: we're proud to preserve the legacy of the much-loved fan Minotaur by giving the Smallville Slash Archive a new home. We also preserve digital fanworks which can't be hosted on the AO3, such as Zoetrope's multimedia work Missed the Saturday Dance.

We're joyful that we're able to preserve the work of other fans by providing new homes for the collections which have been so lovingly curated by others. One of the things which makes this work possible is the generosity of fans who donate to the OTW and thus fund administration costs, transport for zine collections, servers for the AO3, and other hosting costs. Please help us continue to preserve these fannish histories by donating today. And if you've got about 15 minutes to spare, let us know what you think of the OTW and its projects by taking our OTW Community Survey. Thank you!

Did you know that the OTW’s journal, Transformative Works and Cultures (TWC), is more than just academics writing about fandom? TWC actually has all kinds of content that's written by and for fans, such as its just-released ninth issue, which focuses on fan/remix video. The best part about TWC, at least if you ask its editors, is that its articles get discussed, debated, and even argued about within fan culture, while still serving as a resource to acafen, other academics, and the media.

For example, the most recent issue was repeatedly referenced at the yearly conference of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies. The upcoming tenth issue, co-edited by Henry Jenkins and Sangita Shresthova, concentrates on fan activism and has already been referenced in the New York Times even before publication. Since the journal's founding five years ago, the editors of TWC have received numerous reprint requests for print anthologies.

OTW founded TWC with the intention of providing a space for academic research on fandom and fan works in order to showcase the breadth and importance of such studies to other academics, other fans, and the outside public. As part of its commitment to creative freedom, all of TWC’s articles are licensed through Creative Commons, which means anyone can republish the essays as soon as they are published, so long as the republishing party provides a link to the original source.

Lately, more and more academics are calling for a boycott on long-established publishers who use academic—often publicly funded—labor for the research, writing, peer review, and even editing of their articles, but nevertheless prevent the public from having access to the final products. Such traditional models of publishing keep valuable information behind pay walls at increasingly prohibitive costs. Due to its status as an online-only, Open Source, peer-reviewed academic journal, TWC exists not only on the cutting edge of current academic movements, but also at the forefront of the fight for intellectual freedom and continued informational access.

Be sure to check out essays on mashups, remixes, fan trailers, and more in the latest issue of TWC, and donate to help OTW continue this vital, ground-breaking project!

Thank you to Kristina Busse, editor, for providing the overwhelming amount of information for this post.

It's been quite a year for fandom in the mainstream. Since last March's membership drive we've seen a cover story in Time magazine on Harry Potter fandom and international news coverage of 50 Shades of Grey, the Twilight fanfic turned bestselling original novel.

The news coverage of the 50 Shades phenomenon has drawn considerable attention to fandom and fanfic — not all of it necessarily good. Even as we in fandom are witnessing the emergence of new, more positive attitudes towards fandom and its place in mainstream culture, we're still seeing old questions, assumptions, and misunderstandings appearing in the media — for example, this article in The Guardian on 50 Shades that describes the novel's origins as "online slash/fic (fan-published erotic writing at the creepier end of the internet)." The New Yorker's Elizabeth Minkel recently asked, "Why, when discussing fan fiction, do journalists often sound like anthropologists discovering some long-lost tribe — and a somewhat unsavory and oversexed one at that?"

When fandom voices get left out of the conversation, often what results is something like Dear Author's recent assay at connecting slash fiction to m/m romance using two panelists who neither read slash nor enjoyed fanfiction. The end result is often confusing to non-members of fandom and unsatisfying to members of fandom. What's more, many of us in fandom know that what manifests as mere factual inaccuracy or stereotyping of fans and their "creepy" online activities can turn into censorship, ostracism, and more, such as the recent arrests and even jailing of manga fans for violating obscenity laws.

Fans know all too well that if we don't speak up for ourselves, the media, TPTB, and even the law can speak for us and define us. The OTW's function as a liaison to mainstream media continues to be important because it gives fans the opportunity to speak for ourselves, to have a voice in the face of misrepresentation. For example, Lev Grossman turned to the OTW to put him in touch with fans when writing his Time article, which many feel is one of the most positive representations of fandom we've seen yet.

The OTW is committed to ensuring that the mainstream media hears fannish voices from all walks of life and all kinds of fandoms. But we can't do that without having a strong fanbase of our own. Without first hearing from you, we can't make sure that mainstream media hears from us. Our resources, our knowledge, and our devotion to the cause of representation all come from our members. Each one of you can strengthen us. Each one of you can allow our voice as an organization to grow and be heard.

And that makes you our best bet for more positive representation in the year to come.

Please become an OTW member today. And if you've got about 15 minutes to spare, let us know what you think of the OTW and its projects by taking our OTW Community Survey. Thank you!

At the recent April Showers Import Party, the topic of tagging came up. Unsurprisingly — there were fanworks finding homes on the Archive of Our Own, after all. And one of the most amazing things about the AO3 is definitely its tagging system.

What makes this particular tagging system so amazing? It's specifically designed so that users can use any tag, in exactly the form they want it on their works, while keeping those works as organized as they would be in a strictly classification-based archive. Perhaps even better organized, since AO3 tagging not only allows users to search for works using tags based on traditional classifications like fandom, character and relationship, but also tens of thousands of canonical "additional tags" that go far beyond the limits of genre. And the more you tag, the better it works overall (more on why that's so later).

So, you may be asking, what’s a canonical additional tag? And how does a tag come to be one?

First, a bit of tagging history is in order. The indexing of information using keywords isn’t a new practice, of course. When del.icio.us launched in 2003, the new part of their model wasn’t the link collections or the keywords themselves — those had been around on the Internet pretty much since the start. Their innovation was to give users the power to attach keywords to those link collections. Nearly ten years on, the AO3 has made a great start at putting that sort of descriptive tagging power in the hands of fan creators when it comes to archiving their fanworks.

A great deal of that power comes from additional tags (originally called freeform tags). They're tags that don’t fall into the standard fandom/character/relationship groupings, and include kinks, tropes, genres, story elements, word counts, recording lengths, video formats, fan art media, POVs, episode tags, additional warnings, and whatever else users can think of! And all those additional tags gain their useful descriptive power when they're made canonical, appearing in the search filters and the auto-complete box as the most useful, general forms of particular tags, with many other synonymous tags linked to them. Tag wranglers — fans who have volunteered to curate the tags belonging to particular fandoms — do the linking, so for a tag to have been made canonical means that a wrangler has either recognized it as complying with tag wrangling guidelines or created it in compliance with those guidelines specifically so they can attach another tag to it.

What that means is that when an additional tag appears in the archive, a tag wrangler assesses whether people searching for works would like to be able to search for works tagged with it. Often the answer is yes, but sometimes it's no — and that's fine! That doesn't mean that you shouldn't tag your works using whatever tags you like; those tags will still bring up works, after all, even if they aren't canonical! A tag wrangler making your tag canonical just means that they judged it a useful addition to the filters — and one that other people might want to have the option of tagging works with, as well.

So if you can tag with whatever you want, how do you effectively use additional tags to shine a spotlight on your work?

This is where we return to the question of how more tagging makes the system work better. You see, additional tags make it possible to bring up works tagged everything from Accidental Marriage to Zombies — and everything else in between. So, using tags which highlight tropes or kinks (among other things), means that people interested in these topics can more easily find your works containing them. And this isn't just limited to fanfic — there are additional tags which describe aspects of other types of fanworks that people might be looking for, as well — whether it’s a crochet pattern, a short podfic, or an example of digital fan art.

What it comes down to is this: your were-creature accidental marriage fic/podfic/painting/quilt with zombies and a female BAMF character of color lead might be exactly the work Fan X was looking for. And they might never know it exists, if you don't tell the world exactly what awesome stuff it contains. There're a lot of awesome fanworks featuring a lot of awesome stuff on the AO3 just waiting for people to spotlight those awesome qualities, so go forth and tell people that your fic is epistolary or your comic features a mythical being or creature or that your podfic is a cast recording.

While many of us love the diversity that additional tags bring, if you don't like seeing additional tags on works, you can always choose to ignore them, or even hide them completely using a custom skin and the Blurblings Hide freeform tags skin.

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If you'd like to know more about tagging on the AO3, or about what tag wranglers do, the Tag Wrangling Committee is having an open house on Sunday, April 22, from 19:00 to 21:00 UTC (see when this is in your timezone) in OTW's public chatroom on Campfire. The chatroom can be accessed at: https://fanarchive.campfirenow.com/c6440 Feel free to drop by at any time during the session to ask questions or just to hang out.

The AO3 and its tagging system are funded by fans, for fans. To help keep it growing, please donate today.

Fanlore is a library and its shelves are lined with your fandoms.

No, really! Fanlore is a collection of fannish memories, complete with a bibliography, glossary, chronology, and scribbled annotations in the margins. Fanlore wants you to add the urban legends you tell around the campfire and on memes, the happy memories you share when you chat with other fans, and the gifs of your fandom, all grown up, that you show new acquaintances on Tumblr. Fanlore wants to archive artifacts from your fannish communities and leave space on the shelves for future endowments.

And how can Fanlore do that? Fanlore is entirely user-driven, a wiki created, edited, and updated by fans, for fans. Fanlore recognizes and embraces fandom as a large, diverse, culture-rich community. Your favorite tropes. Your favorite fanworks. Your favorite traditions.

Fanlore is a library fueled by the passion of fans for the preservation of their fannish histories. Fanlore is also fueled by the Organization for Transformative Works. Without the support of OTW members, Fanlore would not be able to bring together and preserve the many parts of fannish histories that interested readers may be searching for. Donating time, money, or public displays of affection to the OTW all help guarantee that Fanlore can continue to document our fandoms and tell our stories.

Help us preserve fannish memories for years to come — please donate today.

We'd love to hear what you think of Fanlore and the rest of OTW's projects. Please let us know by taking the OTW Community Survey between now and May 2.

Advocating for the legitimate status of fanworks is an ongoing battle, and OTW's Legal Advocacy project is at the forefront.

Our legal committee is currently working to renew an exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) for makers of noncommercial remix videos such as fan vids, AMVs, and political remix videos. In 2010, when OTW joined with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and other like-minded organizations to win this exemption, we knew we'd have to return and defend it again only a few years later. Unlike the copyright expansions of recent years, the DMCA exemptions expire unless they're reinstated every three years.

Legal's chair, Rebecca Tushnet, says that although it's hard to say at this point how different this year's DMCA process is from the previous one, she's certain of one thing: "the MPAA and other organizations took us much more seriously this time, since we were basically ignored until we had a success under our belt."

We're also gaining a valuable network of allies in the larger free-expression, pro-fair-use activist world. As well as working closely with EFF, we've had positive interactions with groups such as the Documentary Filmmakers' Association and USC-Annenberg's Norman Lear Center. Tushnet, who will be testifying at the DMCA rule-making in May and June, points out that "the DMCA affects all sorts of creators, and as we work with them there's a great opportunity for mutual learning."

Although the DMCA exemption has been central in our thoughts and efforts this year, volunteers from Legal have also worked on contributing to the Wikipedia page on legal issues in fanfiction to provide a more law-based discussion of fans' rights; advising fans who have been sent DMCA takedown notifications; and providing assistance on an amicus brief in an ongoing case regarding the right of publicity. Legal is also always at the service of fans who have questions regarding non-commercial fanworks. You can contact the legal committee here.

The OTW is a dedicated champion of fans' rights, with an established track record of success — but there are many battles, large and small, still to be fought. Help us fight those battles — please donate today.

In a week following widespread Internet protests against proposed legislation in the U.S., there is an effort going on internationally to protest the potential effects of ACTA. The OTW is concerned about this treaty which has potentially large implications but about which there has been very little information. "In October 2007, the United States, the European Community, Switzerland, and Japan simultaneously announced that they would negotiate a new intellectual property enforcement treaty the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement or ACTA. Australia, the Republic of Korea, New Zealand, Mexico, Jordan, Morocco, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, and Canada have joined the negotiations."

"The main problem with this treaty is that all the negociations are done secretly. Leaked documents show that one of the major goals of the treaty is to force signatory countries into implementing anti file-sharing policies under the form of three-strikes schemes and net filtering practices."

Tell your MEPs and government representatives you want more transparency before this is voted on. Here are some places where you can take action:

• Help sign the Written Declaration about ACTA
• Direct.Gov's UK petition
• Whitehouse.Gov's US petition
• E-petition (Deutsch)
• Suggested guidelines for contacting representatives

The OTW alerted fans back in October to the introduction of bills in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives that threatened fair use and fan practices on online sites, and later urged fans to make their voices heard regarding this alarming legislation.

There is now information about the OPEN act, an alternative to SOPA. This draft bill not only addresses some of the problems raised by SOPA and the Protect-IP Act, but "the proponents of the Open Act (Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif.) aren't afraid (and, in fact, are anxious) to hear from the many folks who care about the future of the Internet. So, they have opened up the entire law-writing process. Right now, you can go to KeepTheWebOpen.com and read the draft bill for yourself (which we encourage you to do) and make comments and suggestions to improve the draft language."

Besides contributing your input you can also learn more about the differences in the bills from a handy chart on the site, as well as their FAQ.

For those interested in continuing to express opposition to SOPA, the EFF has suggestions on activities for bloggers and artists, as well as continuing to urge people to contact their elected representatives.

December 5 is International Volunteer Day, established in 1985 by the United Nations as a day for celebrating and honoring volunteerism around the world. The OTW Board — both current and incoming members — wants to take this opportunity to say a heartfelt THANK YOU to all of the volunteers who make up the OTW.

More than 400 fans around the world currently volunteer at varying levels within the OTW; in almost every time zone, there is at least one OTW volunteer donating time, energy, and love to this organization and to fandom. We exist because of you.

Thank you to everyone involved with Accessibility, Design, & Technology (including all of the AO3 coders and testers); everyone involved with Abuse, Communications, and Content; everyone involved with Development & Membership; everyone who helps keep a eye on our Financial picture; everyone involved with Internationalization & Outreach; everyone involved with our Legal team; everyone involved with the Open Doors project; everyone involved with Support; everyone involved with Tag Wrangling and Translation; everyone involved with Transformative Works & Cultures and the Symposium blog; everyone involved with Systems and with our Wiki committee (and all of the gardeners and editors at Fanlore, too!); all of our Webmasters; everyone involved with our Vidding projects; and last but not least, our Volunteers & Recruiting team.

And hey: if you're interested in becoming one of our volunteers, please fill out our volunteer interest form — we'd love to have you join us in 2012!

In commemoration of International Volunteer Day, we tip our virtual hats to each and every one of you. Thank you so much for all of the work that you do.

All our gratitude,

The OTW Board