Frequently Asked Questions - Organisationen för transformativa verk (OTW)

The Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) is a nonprofit organization established by fans to serve the interests of fans by providing access to and preserving the history of fanworks and fan culture in its myriad forms.

OTW was created to work toward a future in which all fannish works are recognized as legal and transformative, and accepted as legitimate creative activity.

Our mission is to be proactive and innovative in protecting and defending our work from commercial exploitation and legal challenge, and to preserve our fannish economy, values, and way of life by protecting and nurturing our fellow fans, our work, our commentary, our history, and our identity, while providing the broadest possible access to fannish activity for all fans.

A transformative work takes something extant and turns it into something with a new purpose, sensibility, or mode of expression.

Transformative works include but are not limited to fanfiction, real person fiction, fan vids, and fan art. The OTW is interested in all kinds of transformative works, but our priority will be to support and defend the types of works hosted in our archive, and the fans who create them.

The term transformative was specifically chosen to highlight in the nonprofit organization's name one of the key legal defenses for fanworks of all kinds (including real person fiction): that they are transformative of original source materials.

A transformative use is one that, in the words of the U.S. Supreme Court, "adds something new, with a further purpose or different character, altering the [source] with new expression, meaning, or message." A story from Voldemort's perspective is transformative, so is a story about a pop star that illustrates something about current attitudes toward celebrity or sexuality.

The courts have also analyzed "right of publicity" claims against creative works by using the transformative use test from copyright law, so this also applies to one of the main legal issues real person fiction faces. Because one of our primary goals is to defend the right of fanworks to exist, having a key defense for them in our name is important to the organization.

The OTW neither wants to nor can speak for all of fandom: fandom is huge, no matter how you define it. Right now, the OTW wants to provide a useful, searchable, reliable and stable home for all fanfiction regardless of rating or fandom, and in the longer term expand to other fanworks. In order to do that, we're trying to set up a stable, defensible infrastructure—that's the OTW.

We welcome all fandoms in the OTW's projects, including the Archive of Our Own, the Transformative Works and Cultures journal, and the Fanlore wiki. All of us engaged in making transformative fannish works face a common set of legal issues; we'd like to help fellow fans fight off pointless cease & desist letters, or find legal help if they've got a good case and want to pursue it.

We are trying to find allies and make connections before there's any trouble, while also explaining to the world why there shouldn't be trouble, because fans are loyal customers.

The OTW has its roots in a fan community with a decades-long history as a community made up mostly of women. Today, due to the internet and new technology, that community and its interests are rapidly growing in various ways and intersecting with other fan communities with different histories. We are excited and hopeful about the way our community is expanding and meeting with other varieties of remix culture, and we welcome anyone who wants to do what we're doing. At the same time, it is still important to us to acknowledge that this particular creative community is a place created and shaped so strongly by the tastes of women, because that is historically a pretty rare and amazing thing.

OTW values all fans, and the contributions made by fans of all genders. As the Organization grew out of a practice of transformative fanwork historically rooted in a primarily female culture, we also specifically value that history of women's involvement, and the practices of fandom shaped by women's work.

Many organizations, including the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, the Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, focus on issues and interests related to fandom; the OTW is specifically focusing on issues relating to transformative works of fanfiction, fanvids, and fanart.

OTW is an organization created by fans, for fans. It's run by a board of directors. See About Us for more information.

The 2007-2008 Board was appointed to get the OTW up and running. All subsequent boards are elected by OTW members. It is the Board's responsibility to organize committees, make final decisions, keep financial records, handle compliance, and so on.

Board members are asked to serve three-year terms. One-third of the Board is elected every year. The Board is elected from among members in good standing who have served at least one term on a committee. Every member of the OTW gets one vote in the election, regardless of how much they contribute. If you are interested in running for the Board, please contact Elections staff. For more information about our elections process, please visit the OTW Elections website.

The Board determines which committees should be organized, then appoints chairs to those committees and approves committee members chosen by the chairs. The initial committee members were chosen from people who responded to the first public "Willing to Serve" call for volunteers.

We welcome anyone who would like to help! There are hundreds of volunteers participating in the OTW's projects—the large majority have volunteered in response to our public recruiting posts. OTW's volunteers include people of many races, genders, cultures, sexual identities, and abilities. The OTW does not discriminate on the basis of any of the above, and we value diversity among our staff. Please contact our Volunteers committee if you would like to volunteer.

We are always on the lookout for great committee members! Committees are appointed annually, with occasional midseason replacements as needed. Chairs generally have a free hand in appointing their committees, and they will naturally be drawing most from those who have volunteered with their committee or have other (fannish or real-world) relevant experience. If you are interested in serving on a particular committee, please let the Volunteers committee know.

Naomi Novik put out a call for those willing to serve in the organization in June of 2007, and chose the first board from among those who responded, on the basis of putting together a team with the particular set of skills and experience needed to set up the infrastructure of a nonprofit organization, including its bylaws. These bylaws include the rules and terms under which a membership could be gathered and a future board legally elected.

A third of the board seats were up for election in 2008; two founding members gave up their seats, and two new Board members were affirmed by the membership. Within three years, the entire board will have been elected by the membership. For more information about our elections process, please visit the OTW Elections website.

We welcome everyone who wishes to discuss sources (shows, bands, sports players, anime, etc.) and fandom; we welcome everyone who creates or enjoys fanfiction, vids, fanart, and other kinds of transformative works.

We are all fans first, and that is why we are giving our time to the organization.

The OTW is run by the same people who have helped make, collectively: The Automatic Archive software, Yuletide, Buffistas.org, Polyamorous Recs, Pornish Pixies, the Exwood Archive, Vividcon, con.txt, DSX, DSA, The Snarry Reader, the "Snape After Deathly Hallows" fest, the SGA Big Bang, the Sugar Quill, the DS Seekrit Santa, the Supernatural Wiki, the Foresmutters Project, Sweet Charity, pirate_hunters, the Wolverine & Rogue Fanfiction Archive, the X-Men Movieverse Fan Fiction archive, the Audiofic Archive—among many other major fannish projects—and more stories, vids, and fannish art than you could shake the proverbial stick at.

You can find the biographies of the current Board of Directors, including their fannish affiliations, here on the website.