• Fans and the general public are becoming less tolerant of corporate overreaches in copyright claims. A crackdown on Etsy vendors marketing Firefly-related hats caused sufficient outrage that one outlet selling the licensed hats decided to donate its profits to a Firefly charity. Yet as The Mary Sue pointed out, at least part of the anger was because now that "Fox has actually decided to license merchandise based on the ten year old television series" they're "taking shots at the smaller, unlicensed retailers that have been serving the market niche they’ve been ignoring."
• Other overreaches garnered an even larger response, prompting the enforcement-happy Disney company to change an upcoming film title. "[T]he Internet flipped out in response to the news that Disney had filed several applications to trademark the Mexican holiday Día de los Muertos, which is the subject of an upcoming Pixar film. The freak out-age is completely justified: Trademarking Día de los Muertos would be exploitative, appropriative, and disrespectful of Mexican culture, plus it’s just downright insane (owning trademark to a holiday? C’mon, Disney). Luckily the massive amount of criticism got Disney to back off."
• Collective action seems key. Research fellow Nicholas Theisen wrote about copyright in relation to manga and scanlations as well as examining issues surrounding fair use. "[M]edia companies quite often bully individuals and smaller companies into abdicating fair use rights simply by virtue of being able to spend more money on lawyers and on legal means of protecting one’s IP." This doesn't affect just fans but also scholars. "[I]t has become standard practice for publishers of comics scholarship to demand that authors get express written permission for each and every image to be reproduced, even though a work of scholarship is an obvious example of fair use." The problem is one that doesn't even reach litigation. "Scholars regularly lament this state of affairs, yet there is little pushback, because, at the end of the day, if you don’t get the permissions, your book doesn’t get published, and if your book doesn’t get published, the likelihood of your getting tenure plummets. The practice of publishers is likely never to change unless people at some point say “no,” at very real risk to themselves and their careers."
• The new U.S. H.R. 1892 bill would amend the DMCA to require that circumvention be in aid of copyright infringement to be unlawful. This would fix a number of issues, including the OTW's need to get an exemption for vidders every three years. U.S. fans to whom these exemptions are important might want to contact their representatives in support of the bill.

What collective action have you seen bring about a success for fans? Write about it in Fanlore! Contributions are welcome from all fans.

We want your suggestions! If you know of an essay, video, article, podcast, or link you think we should know about, comment on the most recent OTW Fannews post. Links are welcome in all languages! Submitting a link doesn't guarantee that it will be included in a roundup post, and inclusion of a link doesn't mean that it is endorsed by the OTW.

• Slate wrote about how badly the DMCA affects accessibility of technology from ebooks to online videos. "[P]ublishers, video programmers, and other copyright owners lock down digital content with digital rights management technology designed to limit users’ ability to access, copy, and adapt copyrighted works to specific circumstances. And copyright owners frequently fail to account for the need to adapt DRM-encumbered works to make them accessible to people with disabilities.

  For example, e-books often include DRM technology that prevents people who are blind or visually impaired from running e-books that they have lawfully purchased through a text-to-speech converter that reads the books aloud. Similarly, Internet-distributed video and DVD and Blu-ray discs include DRM features that prevent researchers from developing advanced closed captioning and video description technologies that make movies and television shows accessible."

  What's more the process is the same one the OTW has to follow to maintain its DMCA exemption for fan video makers. "Requiring nonprofit disability groups to ask permission from the government every three years and navigate a complex legal minefield to implement urgently needed accessibility technology is not compatible with progressive, conservative, or libertarian values; the goal of equal access for people with disabilities; or common sense.”

• Two of the OTW's Legal Committee members, Heidi Tandy and Rebecca Tushnet, recently were on a fanfiction panel with Vice President and Senior Intellectual Property Counsel for Warner Bros, Dale Nelson at the 6th Annual PIPG Symposium. Tushnet wrote about the panel and Nelson's discussion of fan activities: "Fan activity is fans having fun. Are they legitimate, are they acting from love? Or do they see fan activity as a loophole—make a fan film to showcase talent without having read Harry Potter? It’s not fans commercializing the property. We have exclusive rights; commercialization/merchandising in particular will draw our attention. But we tolerate a lot, including fan films, websites (the Leaky Cauldron, popular HP site); Dallas fan site; Lord of the Rings fan site; Quiddich players." She also responded later that it was how they interpreted fan intentions that mattered the most. For example, running ads on a website was usually not an issue because "some fan activities/sites do involve costs, and if it couldn’t run ads/raise a little money it wouldn’t exist."
• Techdirt posted about a White House petition aimed at changing copyright for the digital age. "The petition notes that the public has lost respect for copyright law, and the government should take steps to fix that, including securing first sale rights, more transparency and a right to remix." Fan rights are expressed in the following: "[A]s responsible creators we need to be able to freely remix existing music and other forms of creative expression to create new works without undue fear of prosecution. This upholds the original Constitutional purpose of copyright, which is to promote progress."
• Popular bookmarking site Pinboard has made it easier for fans to use it. "For months now it's been possible to declare yourself a part of fandom on the Pinboard settings page, but apart from making people feel good, the checkbox had no practical effect. I've finally changed that by offering a version of the sitewide search engine scoped only to users who self-declare as fans. This should make it easier to find fic using common keywords that would get drowned out on the main search page."

Do you have stories about fan-focused technology or legal developments? Write about it in Fanlore! Contributions are welcome from all fans.

We want your suggestions! If you know of an essay, video, article, podcast, or link you think we should know about, comment on the most recent OTW Fannews post. Links are welcome in all languages! Submitting a link doesn't guarantee that it will be included in a roundup post, and inclusion of a link doesn't mean that it is endorsed by the OTW.

Welcome to our Events Calendar roundup for the month of October! The Events Calendar can be found on the OTW website and is open to submissions by anyone with news of an event. These can be viewed by event-type, such as Academic Events, Fan Gatherings, Legal Events, OTW Events, or Technology Events taking place around the world.

• The multimedia, multi-fandom slash convention Connotations will be held for the tenth time from 5 October to 7 October in Durham, England. Unique features of Connotations include the large on-site zine library and the fact that all panels are voted on and selected by fans.
  More information about Connotations on Fanlore
• Celebrate the achievements of women in science and technology in honor of Ada Lovelace Day on 16 October. Lovelace was a 19th-century writer and mathematician whose writings inspired the development of modern computers. The day is marked by thousands of individuals blogging about women the admire in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
• The opportunity to further support women in open technology and culture is always available with the Ada Initiative. The international nonprofit sponsors AdaCamp, a series of technology camps for young women, in addition to events and conferences that support and engage women in open source work. The Ada Initiative is currently holding one of their annual fundraisers through 31 October with a goal of 1000 donors to help sustain their work.
• Join chemists around the world in honoring Mole Day on 23 October with this year's theme of 'Molar Eclipse'. The celebration occurs annually on this date from 6:02 AM to 6:02 PM and is derived from Avogrado's number - ~6.02x10²³ - which defines the number of particles in one mole of substance. Commonly celebrated in high schools to get students interested in chemistry, the holiday is also supported by the U.S.-based National Mole Day Foundation.

A Call for Submissions this month comes from the Australian Law Reform Commission in response to the issues paper Copyright and the Digital Economy.

"This Issues Paper is the first formal publication of the Inquiry, intended to help frame discussion and encourage public consultation at an early stage. It provides background information about copyright in the digital environment, highlights the issues so far identified in preliminary research and consultations, and outlines the principles that will shape the ALRC’s proposals for reform."

Responses are due via the online submission form no later than 16 November 2012.

The OTW encourages anyone to submit an event that's not already listed, and to check out the calendar throughout the year!

Transformative Works and Culture Discusses the Impact of Fandom on Social Activism

NEW YORK, N.Y. (June 15, 2012)—_Transformative Works and Cultures_ (TWC, http://journal.transformativeworks.org/) today released its tenth issue, "Transformative Works and Fan Activism." This issue is guest edited by media studies scholars Henry Jenkins and Sangita Shresthova and features academic articles on the growing involvement of fan cultures and fandom on activism. Following its regular format, this open-access online multimedia journal has collected scholarly essays, personal essays, and book reviews that seek to bridge fan and academic writers and readers. TWC is published under the umbrella of the nonprofit fan advocacy group Organization for Transformative Works (http://transformativeworks.org/).

Co-editor Henry Jenkins argues, "One way that popular culture can enable a more engaged citizenry is by allowing people to play with power on a microlevel...Popular culture may be preparing the way for a more meaningful public culture." Jenkins's contribution discusses the idea of "cultural acupunture"; other essays discuss civic engagement via the Harry Potter Alliance; the German federal elections of 2009; the response to the Wisconsin legislature's stripping unions of collective bargaining rights; and affect and agency. Essays about specific fandoms address The X-Files, The Colbert Report,the Whedonverses, and Ho Denise Wan See. A central interest of many essays is the use of social media by organizations such as the Harry Potter Alliance, Invisible Children (whose Kony 2012 video recently went viral), and the Nerdfighters.

This large special issue emerges from work being done by the Participatory Culture and Civic Engagement Project (http://sites.google.com/site/participatorydemocracyproject/) at the University of Southern California (Henry Jenkins, principal investigator).

Guest editor Henry Jenkins is a professor of communications and cinematic arts at the University of Southern California. Formerly the director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies program, he specializes in fan cultures and their effect on world making and franchise growth; his landmark book Textual Poachers remains a classic in the fan studies academic canon. Based on his studies on the evolution of popular culture and the processing of news information, Jenkins focuses on the transformation of the role of journalism in the digital age. His most recent book, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, discusses the intersection of grassroots and corporate media, with examples of the transformative fan interactions in the worlds of Harry Potter and the Matrix.

Guest editor Sangita Shresthova is a Czech/Nepali international development specialist, filmmaker, media scholar, and dancer. She earned her doctorate from UC Los Angeles' Department of World Arts and Cultures and specializes in the globalization of Bollywood dance. Shresthova also manages Jenkins's new project on participatory culture and civic engagement.

Founded in 2007, The Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), is a nonprofit established established by fans to serve the interests of fans by providing access to and preserving the history of fan works and fan culture in its myriad forms. Advocating on behalf of fans, the OTW believes that fan works are transformative and that transformative works are legitimate.

The 11th issue of TWC will feature more general submissions and is scheduled for release on September 15, 2012. No. 12 is slated to be a special issue on "Transnational Boys’ Love Fan Studies," guest edited by Kazumi Nagaike and Katsuhiko Suganuma, and will appear on March 15, 2013. No. 13 is slated to be a special issue on "Appropriating, Interpreting, and Transforming Comic Books," guest edited by Matthew Costello, and will appear June 15, 2013.