Here’s a roundup of stories that might be of interest to fans: articles about professional fanart, technology meant to control fans, interactive fan sites, erotic fan fiction and sexuality, new models for fan-TPTB collaboration, and fans as transmedia specialists, all beneath the cut!

* Just Don't Call It Fanart. Salon did a fascinating article on an ongoing art show called "Crazy 4 Cult" which features artists making work based on movie stills. The show is patronized by the likes of Kevin Smith, Quentin Tarentino, Samuel L. Jackson and others. But, Salon warns, "Just don't call it 'fan art.'" (It sounds to us a lot like fan art.)

* Who Controls Your Camera? The Electronic Frontier Foundation recently posted about the implications of Apple's new patent: a camera that can be turned off by a third party. The idea is to stop fans from, say, capturing "illegal images" at a rock concert. The EFF points out that this repression of fans is bad enough, but also asks us also to imagine how that technology might be used in an era where portable cameras have been used to document and publicize civil rights abuses and spread important news all around the world. Who gets to decide what you can record?

* Interactive Sites Before Pottermore. There have been many stories these last few weeks about Pottermore, J.K. Rowling's new interactive Harry Potter site, but here's an article about some other explicitly pro-fanfiction and pro-interactivity authors who have put together creative sandboxes for their fans.

* Elmer Fudd vs. Miss Marple? This review of A Billion Wicked Thoughts, a book which uses erotic fan fiction and other online materials to draw conclusions about human sexuality, critiques the book on many fronts, but most notably from a lesbian perspective: "Is the near total silence about this quadrant of human desire because the authors couldn't fit lesbians into their thesis?"

* No Endorsement; Endless Possibilities: Cory Doctorow, thinking through the implication of creating "ODOs" or On-Demand Objects, imagines a world where creators and owners could give fans a "no endorsement" license to make and sell derivative (not transformative!) works. The maker would automatically cut in the creator/owner for a stipulated percent of any profit.

* Transmedia 2: Electric Bugaloo: Henry Jenkins has posted footage from all four panels of this spring's Transmedia Hollywood 2 conference. There was discussion of fan culture and works throughout the conference, with many panelists believing that fans have acknowledged expertise in transmedia storytelling, and others debating how best to engage fans in this new multi-modal world. (OTW Board Member Francesca Coppa was on the second panel to talk explicitly about fan works and characterization.)

We want your suggestions! If you know of an essay, video, article, event, or link you think we should know about you can submit it in three easy ways: comment on the most recent Link Roundup on transformativeworks.org, LJ, or DW, tag a link with "for:otw_news" on Delicious or give @OTW_News a shoutout on Twitter. 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.

American University’s Center for Social Media and AU's Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property, in collaboration with Stanford Law School's Fair Use Project, have launched a new video explaining how online video creators can make remixes, mashups, and other common online video genres with the knowledge that they are staying within copyright law.

The video, titled Remix Culture: Fair Use Is Your Friend, explains the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video (which was worked on by OTW's very own Rebecca Tushnet). Like the code, the video identifies various kinds of unlicensed uses of copyrighted material that may be considered fair, under certain limitations. Of particular interest to vidders and fannish remix artists might be: "commenting or critiquing of copyrighted material", "use for illustration or example", "use to launch a discussion", and "recombining to make a new work, such as a mashup or a remix, whose elements depend on relationships between existing works."

Catherine Tosenberger, Guest Editor of a upcoming special issue of Transformative Works and Cultures (TWC) on Supernatural, was interviewed by Suzette Chan for Sequential Tart, a feminist webzine about the comics industry. Read the interview to find out more about TWC, the OTW, and the epic love story of Sam and Dean.

March 25, 2009 - Our own Naomi Novik appears on today's broadcast of NPR's All Things Considered, in a a story called Will E-Book Anti-Piracy Technology Hurt Readers? The aired program, as well as a shorter print version, is now available at the NPR website. Naomi is speaking against the DRM [Digital Rights Management] protection on e-books that mean that they can't easily be transferred from Kindle to Laptop to iPhone. Naomi notes that: "The biggest danger to most authors, to most storytellers, is not that somebody is going to steal your work and pass it along — it is that nobody is ever going to see your work."