Willis. Will. Bill.

Bill and Ted. They were Bill and Ted all along

me, a roy/jamie/keeley truther:

tag urself im the lemur giving an inspirational speech in the footwell

Disney Wants Your Stuff. (No, I’m serious, they literally say you own the copyright to your fanwork until they say that THEY own it, i.e. Welcome to the new Disney TOS, Baby.

First up, the link, so chill already: https://disneytermsofuse.com/  Your relevant and terrifying passage(s) are the entirety of Section 7. Go read it. I’ll wait.

Now. First thing to understand is that the legal language within the new TOS *implies* that Disney is only referring to people who use its services, people who clicked and agreed to this new TOS. But it’s implication only. That’s not what this TOS actually says.

This TOS spends a lot of time defining fanworks, or as they call it, User Generated Content.

They want to make it clear that,

a) You totally have the right to make User Generated Content (UGC) all you want.

b) You can put that UGC anywhere you want, whether they own the site or someone else does. What matters is that you’ve put that UGC in a publically accessible place…like, oh, AO3.

c) Disney spends a few breaths saying that the creator of the UGC owns the copyright to that UGC…except if you read those words carefully, they’re not guaranteeing you anything, because THEY own the copyright.

d) Disney then says, since they own the copyright to your UGC, they can literally do anything they want with it. They can steal it, crib it, use the entire thing as their own, make money off of it, reprint it, ANYTHING–and you do not get credit. You do not get paid. You do not get acknowledgement. You might get a DMCA telling you take down your UGC because it is now *their* content that they’re selling and how dare you steal from them. (No, I’m not kidding.)

e) Nobody seems to know a fucking thing about this.

f) The bullshit on Twitter over May the Fourth was just a smokescreen, sorry. https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/28/21238909/disney-star-wars-maythe4th-hashtag-copyright-contract-twitter

Disney doesn’t want your Tweets. They just wanted to see who was paying attention, and how, and if they could get away with it. (Yes, they did go after someone who reposted Disney’s own tweets. No more information on that yet.)

g) Yes, you should absolutely take this seriously. You should be terrified, because how many fan content creators have the bank to fight this if their “copyrighted content” that Disney specifies is still *their* copyrighted content is stolen? OTW exists for this very reason, but this is fucking Disney. They. Own. Almost. Everything. In. The. Corporate. United. States. Entertainment. Industry.

h) No, your MCU, Star Wars, Pixar, Disney animated films, ANY such fanworks, are not safe. If Disney likes it, they will take it. If you say they can’t, they’ll point to their new site-wide TOS and say that they can. Is that legal? Don’t actually know, but think about who’s in the White House right now. Think about who he’d support. Yes, the Library of Congress and the House of Reps are supposed to be in charge, but how long until we could push for them to deal with/fix this shit?

i) Yes, Disney is probably trying to steal content in order to survive the pandemic, seeing as their major sources of revenue (parks and movies) aren’t happening right now.

j) Yes, I will be removing my Star Wars content. I didn’t work on that fucking story for nearly 20 years just for some corporate shill to fucking steal it.

k) Someone who currently wishes to remain anonymous has pinged an OTW peep to see if they’re aware.

l) If they weren’t so specific to point out that they really do mean Any Public Place, I wouldn’t be so concerned…but it doesn’t. This isn’t just about their services. This is about the entire fucking internet.

That’s it. You guys now know everything I know, so no, I wouldn’t be able to answer any of your questions. I suggest spreading the word, if only so someone else with more information can step up and reassure us that Disney can’t do what they believe they can do…

…but it’s fucking DISNEY. They nearly destroyed Public Domain in the United States over fucking Mickey Mouse a hundred years ago. Do you really think they’re going to say, “Oh, sorry, our bad” about this?

I worked in the intellectual property department of a company for 2 years. Not a lawyer, just worked around it for a while

1. The PR on straight up stealing fanworks would be so unbelievably bad that there’s actually no way that it would happen

2. Derivative work is original work and everything but previously copyrighted work is copyrightable. Meaning JK Rowling can’t steal the plot to your fic just because it features her characters. But she can send you a cease and desist letter about it if you try to publish it and it still contains her copyrighted content, because then it would no longer be considered fair use

3. Fair use is the most often used defense against copyright infringement and fanworks that aren’t made for profit fall under this as they’re a transformative work, similar to educational use and parody. A TOS can’t change federal law just cause it says so.

4. Disney is notorious for having scary legal language that gives them more protection than they need. Given the context, I’m pretty sure this is so, for example as the Star Wars Twitter thing, if you post on a third party website (like Twitter), and Disney has something like, say, a thing where they post fans tweets that are submitted to them, they don’t want fans turning around and claiming it’s copyright infringements. User generated content, while it could refer to fanfic, is probably referring to things like tweets. Tweets are copyrightable. That’s why there’s a tweet listed as an underlying work for a Beyonce song. No company is going to clarify this to give themselves LESS protection

5. Really, I must say again, the PR of stealing fan content would be so terrible that I just don’t see that happening. They have people running around actually making money off copyright infringement to worry about. The precendent set by saying derivative works are owned by the person who’s works it’s derived from would be very bad for Disney, so they’re not going to say that.

As stated in the article linked, you can’t enter into a contract that you don’t know exists. Disney can’t post this and then start pilfering fic from AO3 nor do I think they’re planning to

Disney probably doesn’t want your stuff and they’re not going to take it even if they do

Nobody is talking about it because there’s nothing to talk about

Y’know, that bit at the end wasn’t necessary, but I’m gonna be polite anyway.

If you really believe all of what you’ve said, then you’ve gotta be too young to remember when this was an active daily fandom threat. Which is great! Awesome. If you DO remember when this was an active daily fandom threat…you’ve forgotten several key examples of why this could, yes, so easily happen. There’s a reason why the Organization for Transformative Works exists, and it’s for *this.* All the copyright ideals you quoted that our country is supposed to adhere to–which many of us are well aware of–are often completely disregarded in the favor of the famous, particularly if the famous have money. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_issues_with_fan_fiction

Ann Rice. Remember that tit’s fucking screaming over fanfic? The threats and the lawsuits and the attacks? I do, and I had an infant to care for when that shit was going down. https://fanlore.org/wiki/Anne_Rice (That is really a far too tame explanation for this, so here: https://seananmcguire.tumblr.com/post/153836667965/do-not-trust-anne-rice )

J.K. Rowling. Sued the guy who created the HP Lexicon even though he made no money from it and oh, yes, created an amazing resource. Because she was already a millionaire so why not. https://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/09/nyregion/09potter.html

George. Fucking. Lucas. Sent out so many Cease & Desist letters for fandom works in the 1990s that you could probably build a McMansion with them, but Lucasfilm as a whole has been losing its shit about User Generated Content since the 1980s: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/2016/10/18/star-wars-lawsuits-who-has-lucasfilm-sued-and-why/  And no, they never really stopped. They just calmed down for about a decade. Now they’re warming back up with a Disney behemoth behind them.

And since when does Bob Iger Disney give a fuck about bad press? They’ve NEVER cared. In Iger’s eyes, Disney is too big for a bit of bad press to take it down–and he’s right. A two-year-old kid got eaten by an alligator because Disney was literally not doing enough to keep the alligators away from the people visiting their parks (no, just a sign wasn’t enough, the kid was TWO), and Disney’s response? Build a higher wall and give the kid’s family a hell of a lot of money. No fucks given. https://www.justinziegler.net/why-i-think-disney-pay-alligator/

Disney used the incident and turned a preventable death into so much “good” publicity it’s sickening. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/animalia/wp/2017/11/03/disney-knew-its-park-was-full-of-alligators-it-caught-hundreds-before-a-boy-was-killed/

Disney sued one of the companies that sends costumed “heroes” to visit sick/dying kids in the hospital. https://blog.traklight.com/disney-suffers-setback-in-copyright-and-trademark-lawsuit  That’s how concerned they are about Bad Publicity, i.e, they’re NOT. They’re just concerned about the money.

Disney and its properties are already known to be fucking thieves when they see something they want (hint: they take it): https://www.hbsslaw.com/cases/disney-marvel-mova-contour/pressrelease/mova-contour-ip-theft-judge-sides-with-inventors-in-massive-intellectual-property-case-against-disney-fox-paramount-and-others-allowing-cases-to-continue

“The lawsuit came in California federal court in May and pointed to just how seriously Disney takes its own intellectual property. The complaint gave examples: Disney threatened to sue childcare centers for having pictures of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck on the wall; Disney once sued a couple on public assistance for $1 million when they appeared at children’s parties dressed as an orange tiger and a blue donkey; Disney sent takedown notices to social media services upon users posting photographs of their new Star Wars toys; and so forth.” from: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/disney-takes-stand-overzealous-copyright-holders-1134645

Disney does not give a shit about fair use. They do not give a shit about a creator’s copyright. They don’t give a shit about anyone else’s property. They care about their profit margins and if their profit margins say that stealing another’s property and paying them off when the case goes to court is still a net gain rather than a loss? They’re going to do it. They have done it. They’ll keep doing it, too.

So: tell me again how there’s nothing to be worried about.

@rthstewart, you are the person I know who has been part of fandom the longest - thoughts?

@klaineharmony I never tangled with Disney back in the day though the stories of their copyright army are legendary.

In the 80s or thereabouts, Lucasfilm insisted that they get a copy of every zine on publication.  That was how Ming Wathne got all the Star Wars zines – eventually LFL wanted to unload them and she scooped them up.   LFL had this weird “well, we don’t object so long as it’s family friendly.”  They went after at least one E-rated het story in a zine ( I remember reading it at a con in 1995 or thereabouts) and it just drove it all underground, even more – that’s where the slash lived and any explicit content.

When I was working on Lucasfilm licensed properties post TPM in 1999-2001 they were amazingly ignorant of what was online.  That was true of a lot of content rights holders during that time who really didn’t quite “get” what was going on with the internet and the ability to post things where you were no longer limited by zines and mimeograph machines.  I might have told one of the LFL editors about the Master-Apprentice slash site… I’d assumed they were actively monitoring and at least the people I was dealing with were not.  They were mostly leaving fic sites alone by then but there was still a lot of ambiguity and especially any fan generated content posted on commercial sites like AOL. 

Purges still happened in those days and sites would just go dark.  You especially saw it with Xfiles.  20th C and ten-thirteen were SUPER aggressive about X-Files clips being posted.  Lots of sites got C&Ds for posting clips of the Memento Mori kisses.  Paramount was aggressive about Trek content as well. 

There was a reason why we created a meme about Star Wars and copyrights.

“That’s no moon, it’s a copyright attorney.”

“I am an infringer, like my mother before me.”

@rthstewart, thank you! That’s not exactly reassuring, but at least we know the potential of what we’re dealing with. So we all clearly need to be careful in dealing with fanworks and Disney properties, even if their legal terms in this case are overrreaching. I’m hopeful that AO3 legal might come out with a statement as well.

@klaineharmony I recognize that I didn’t actually deal with what Disney would do or the merits of the OP and the responder.  I tend to agree that most content owners traditionally haven’t cared about written fanfiction in a long time.  I’ve not followed the case law.  I’m sure there are others, including the lawyers who work for AO3, who know what activity there has been against fan created work. 

I agree that the rights holder who does decide to protect its “rights” doesn’t need to actually figure out what they are under the law – a point made in the posts above.  It’s EASY and cheap to send a C&D – a couple thousand dollars of attorney time at the most and there are surely form letters and templates at this point.  They can take an extremely expansive view of their rights or even completely invent them as Disney apparently decided to do here and most fan creators getting one of those from a a corporate entity caves and disappears without ever challenging the legality of the C&D. 

In my view there’s a multi-dimensional hierarchy here – the content rights holder balances the benefits of stopping fan created content vs damage to free publicity and bad press.  They also look at whether there is any genuine confusion as to the source of the content, whether the fan creator is making money, including recouping costs, and, I think consider the medium itself.  

Once you get beyond written fanfiction, my impression is that risk does increase.  I’ve never been clear on why fan artists freely charge for their work without harassment but that every written derivative creator knows they cannot in any way charge for their works.  I mean, look at places like Etsy and Red Bubble and ever artists’ alley at every Con.  But at least originally created art and writing, even if derived from another source, are still, “original” transformative works.  Still, I suspect art gets more C&Ds than fanfic does.

I think risk increases once you begin dealing with actual images and music, including fan vids, edits, and any other visual medium taken directly from the source (in other words, most of Tumblr)  In such a case, while there is still a transformative process involved, the original source material is much more integral to and integrated within the transformative work.  I think content rights holders get much pricklier and it’s less predictable as to whether they would try enforce their rights (if they have any to enforce) or threaten to do so (on the assumption they wouldn’t have to litigate because the fan creator would just slink away). 

*BIG SIGH*

My quarantine roommate just came out of her room to inform me that there is ONCE AGAIN Copyright Discourse Happening On Tumblr, because she both knows I have Opinions on this and wanted to verify that OP was wrong, and friends, I am tired, and it’s not just because I watched Star Wars Resistance instead of sleeping last night.

First, let me assure you, as I just did said roommate, that OP is full of scaremongering bullshit.

Next, @shanastoryteller​‘s addition above is largely correct so we could just stop there, but I want to point out two twitter threads:

1) rahaeli’s excellent thread has been linked NUMEROUS times in the notes of this post but I’m gonna link it again because it does a WONDERFUL job of refuting the OP’s points and breaking down why all of that analysis is completely wrong; there’s no need for me to rehash what she’s already said. But suffice it to say: OP CLEARLY DOES NOT UNDERSTAND HOW TOSs OR CONTRACT LAW OR IP LAW WORK

2) There’s a FUCKTON of misconceptions in fandom about how copyright law actually DOES work in regards to fanworks (including in the response directly above), and I literally did a long twitter thread about this two weeks ago. Standard blah blah IANAL I just work for them, but. If you’re curious about, “what actually IS a ‘transformative work’?” or “IS it legal to make money from fanworks?” then check out that thread; I talk about both of those things.

Please, please, consider this my general always-applicable fandom plea, I beg of you: if you have zero experience in reading legalese, do NOT try to spread PSAs if you come across something that seems like it’s saying something scary to you. Double-check with someone who is trained in doing so, because otherwise we end up with widespread misinformation like...this entire post. Sigh.

ETA:  SOMEONE FINALLY FOUND THE RECEIPTS I WAS LOOKING FOR YESTERDAY, SO I CAN NOW ADD—I wouldn’t take the the OP screaming about how Disney’s gonna steal your stuff too seriously, considering they once actually legitimately accused Dave Filoni of stealing their Star Wars fanfic.

.

What is that soft thing doing the imprinting

its called a pad printer! theyre very commonly used for applying patterns to non flat and irregularly shaped objects

mwomp

Dark crafting tiddy, give me the squoosh

From @nothingbutthedreams: “#from what I can tell I’m guessing it’s screenprinted onto the glass before the pad picks it up”

Kind of, yes and no! This thing works basically exactly like a giant nail stamping plate—the machine on the right spreads the paint (or glaze, not sure which it is) and then scrapes it off at a 45 degree angle as the plate moves back and forth, so the wet paint settles into the recessed areas of the etched metal plate. So, similar to screenprinting, but no actual silkscreens involved, the metal is permanently etched with the design instead. Then the silicone (I’m assuming) pad, which is shaped to fit the size & shape of the dishes being made, picks up the still wet paint/glaze and transfers it to the waiting dish.

The Podfic-est Fandoms (on ao3)

So there was some discussion on the podfic discord about what makes a strong podfic fandom. Now I don’t think this answers that, but I realized while it was easy to see what fandoms/ships have the most podfic (usually the juggernaut ones) it is harder to say just looking which fandom have the highest rate of podfic. To answer this I turned to @destinationtoast​‘s scripts. I attempted to pull fandoms and ships with more than 25 works tagged podfic on ao3. This limit was a bit a technical one (even like this it took ages to run) but also because when a fandom is small, a few podfics can be a massive skew. It definitely did not pull everything that meets that qualification since as soon as I shared it people found fandoms it missed and obviously some of these fandoms overlap, caveats, etc…

HOWEVER it showed quite clearly that most popular fandom overall =/= most podfic’d so, for fun, two graphs (click the linked title to see original on Sheets) Podfic by Fandom:

(a third piece of data in here, fandoms are in order most to least number of podfics, left to right)

You can see that it’s rare for a fandom to cross 2.5% podfic and also something wild is going on in the Rivers of London fandom. The others to break 2.5% are Leverage (a smallish fandom) and Men’s Hockey RPF which has nearly as man podfics as “The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types” despite having less than a tenth the number of works. Podfic by Ship

Ships on the other hand do seem to break 5% podfic with some frequency. We see ships from our three fandoms that came up as well as from Star Wars, WNTV, DC and a few more non-hockey RPFs Anyways, I don’t have a big conclusion for this aside from just being a big fandom is not always what brings all the podficcers to the yard. If anyone wants to look at what I pulled (or see the graphs better) it is here. Data Retrieved February 21, 2020

Oh, interesting! Thanks for sharing this data. *ponders* Are any of my followers in Rivers of London, Leverage, or Men’s Hockey RPF fandoms able to offer insights there? E.g., are there a few particularly prolific podficcers in those fandoms who are responsible for a lot of the podfics? Or are there other reasons for the unusually high percentages?

Alright, so I was curious. In part about just what’s going on with Rivers of London, in part because I’ve actually listened to a lot of Leverage podfic and had previously noticed just how much there is (especially compared to the small fandom size). So I went trawling through AO3 and came up with some estimates. 

Leverage has a total of 6615 works on AO3 right now, with 251 of those being podfic, coming out to around 3.79%. Of those, nine podficcers account for around 151 podfics- around 60% of all Leverage podfics, assuming no overlap. Since there’s probably overlap between podficcers, the actual fraction is probably closer to 45 or 50%, and that’s just from me scrolling through the ao3 page and seeing who stands out. 

Getting the number of unique podficcers in the Leverage fandom would probably take either a good deal more time than I care to put in atm or being competent with python scripts, which I am not. For the most part, though, it looks like it’s mostly a few podficcers that are responsible for the number of podfics in the Leverage fandom. A lot of them are also people that I know are both prolific and well known (such as Reena_Jenkins). 

Part of this is also probably the Leverage ot3 (138/251 podfics) and ITPE/other podfic events, but it’s still interesting!

For Rivers of London, 49/85 total podfics were made by three separate people- well over half. In addition, a lot of authors have more than one podfic for this fandom listed, same as with Leverage. So it looks like it’s definitely a few dedicated podficcers!

I wanted to weigh in on this both as an #ITPE mod, and someone who’s been around and watched the trends for years. There’s a few things going on here.

So get out there and push your fandoms, people! ;)