KJ

Given my interest in copyright and fair use in fandom, it was probably inevitable that I would write something about the new guidelines for Star Trek fan filmmakers that CBS and Paramount published recently. My post about it is up on ladybusiness, here.

I don't usually pay much attention to E3 or other events like it -- I figure I'll get my information from the write-ups after the fact. But we were promised information about Dragon Age 3, so I've been keeping an eye on the date, and then my Tumblr dashboard exploded in liveblogs and commentary for the various press conferences, so I ended up following along for most of the day (except for an hour in the afternoon when the construction noise from next door got to be too much to deal with, and then early evening when our power went out). Naturally, with that much data, I came up with some thoughts and impressions, almost all of it making me very happy.

1. First, of course, the DA3 trailer, which has grabbed me completely:



Fall 2014! This is a little disappointing, but on the other hand I would really rather they take their time and make a solid game -- I enjoyed DA2 a lot, but it was clearly rushed, and I wish I had been able to play the game the developers intended. I'm glad they don't seem to be making that mistake here. Also, it will be available for both current and next gen consoles, which I know is good news for a lot of people (although I'm highly likely to buy a PS4 -- see below).

( Thoughts and speculation are spoilery for trailer )

2. Also good news: there continues to be absolutely nothing of interest to me that's exclusive to the Xbox, thereby validating my choice not to get one. :P

3. Sony announces that the PS4 will support used games and not require always-on high-speed Internet for single-player games. This is probably the single best announcement out of the entire show: Sony will not be playing along with Microsoft's attempt to destroy the used game market and price lower-income gamers out of their content. As I speculated on Tumblr, I have to wonder whether Sony was originally going to go down that road, then backed off when they saw the uproar that MS provoked over the Xbox One. But it doesn't really matter -- they aren't doing it, and given how much they poked MS in their presser, it seems pretty clear that they aren't going to. Score one for consumers. Does this mean that the console wars as we know them are drawing to a close? Only time will tell. But regardless, I know which company is getting my money.

4. Final Fantasy XV! Which is actually a rebranding of the long (long, long) anticipated FF Versus XIII, a fine decision on Square Enix's part. There's a new trailer, which is very pretty if a little heavy on the dudes. But I'm willing to cut Square a bit of slack in this, at least in the Final Fantasy series, as long as they have good female characters in the game. No release date, but still, more movement on this game than I've seen in a long time.

5. Last but not least: Kingdom Hearts 3. I didn't know how much I wanted this until I saw the teaser trailer, but now I'm a bundle of squee. No release date on this either, of course. I'm going to guess sometime next year, which would suggest that 2014 is going to be really, really busy on the game-playing front.

Copyright is the place where my interests as a fan and as a librarian are most likely to collide, so it's no surprise that I came out of the two talks on the subject I attended this afternoon energized and excited.

The first was a presentation by the founders of http://readersbillofrights.info/ on the subject of ebooks and the danger they present, in their current form, to the rights of readers. It was more of an affirmation to me than a learning opportunity, but sometimes it's useful to know that I'm not alone in my opinions. I do not have and will not purchase an ereader, especially not a Kindle, because of DRM, and they articulate all my reasons beautifully: the fact that I can't sell or lend the book, proprietary software that limits what computer or device I can use to read the book, draconian user agreements that criminalize fair use, etc. I came out with a cool button (see icon), a renewed commitment to my decision not to buy ebooks for personal use, and an extensive list of articles to read (see website).

The second was the presentation from which the post takes this title, a call to action from librarian James Neal in which he asked academic librarians not to abandon our fair use rights. Fair use is not an act of defiance, nor is it a way to skirt copyright law. Fair us is built in to American copyright law, and it's the cornerstone upon which many academic, artistic, and even business pursuits are built. The more we let the fear of lawsuits scare us into not exercising fair use, the more we let restrictive licensing agreements and DRM ignore fair use, the more we enter into international copyright treaties that don't make room for fair use, the more at risk we are of losing it. But if enough librarians band together to fight, he is convinced that we can make a difference, and I believe him. (Much like the OTW provides a platform for fans to stand together on the same issue -- I wish I felt more comfortable combining my personal and professional life score, because how awesome would Fannish Librarians for Fair Use be?)

Food for thought; motivation to continue and extend my efforts as a copyright activist. If I care this much, I should do more.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that GRRM has now gotten involved in this lastest fanfic discussion, since he's voiced loud opposition to fanfiction in the past, and Diana Gabaldon was published in the last collection he edited. (Which, possibly ironically, is the book I'm reading right now. Just for the cherry on the "authors who are connected with fic, pro and con" sundae, Naomi Novik is in it, too.) On the whole, his arguments are more reasoned than hers -- at least he doesn't compare us to a bunch of violent criminals -- but there is one point that I absolutely must take issue with.

Furthermore, we HAVE to do it. That's something no one addressed, in those thousand comments about Diana's blog. There was a lot of talk about copyright, and whether or not fan fiction was illegal, whether it was fair use [...] but no one mentioned one crucial aspect of copyright law -- a copyright MUST BE DEFENDED. If someone infringes on your copyright, and you are aware of the infringement, and you do not defend your copyright, the law assumes that you have abandoned it.

I allow that this would be a really strong argument against allowing fanfic if it were true. But guess what? It isn't.

This particular misconception comes up a lot in debates about fanfic. While it is generally true of trademarks -- if you don't defend them and keep people from using them as generic terms, you can lose them; that's what happened to xerox and kleenex and aspirin, for example, and that's why Google fights against the use of "to google" as a lower-cased verb -- it is not at all true of copyright. As of 1978, in the United States, any creative work placed into a fixed form is, at that point, copyrighted to the original creator. This is true regardless of whether the creator asserts copyright on the work, registers the copyright with the Library of Congress, or defends against unauthorized use. That copyright is yours, and nothing save the passage of time (as of now, 70 years after your death) or your decision to sell the copyright to someone else or release it into the public domain can change that.

I can understand why published authors might be queasy about fanfic, and I don't really judge anyone for disallowing it (practical issues with attempting to do so aside). But I don't think it's too much to ask them to base their positions on actual facts.

Edited to add a link to this beautiful defense of fic, a list of what fanfic is and is not that rings perfectly true to me. Strongly recommended.

Some of you may have heard that the Author's Guild sued Amazon over the text-to-speech capability of the new Kindle, claiming that this feature infringes on their right to sell the rights to audio books. I could link you to any number of articles and blog posts explaining why this charge is clearly ridiculous, but Neil Gaiman (as usual) does the best job of it (make sure to also read the two posts he links at the top). (I am dismayed to see Roy Blount, Jr. leading the charge on the other side.)

Seems pretty clear-cut to me. But Amazon caved. Publishers will be able to opt-out of allowing the Kindle to read their books. Sorry, blind people! Don't have the money for the audio book edition, or no audio version exists? Too bad, so sad.

Is it just me that finds this pretty chilling? Especially coming on top of Google's settlement with the American Association of Publishers and (surprise!) the Authors Guild over their book scanning project. To be fair, that one makes more sense to me -- although most experts agreed that Google had a pretty good fair use case, it was risky to carry it forward in the current legal environment, which tends to favor copyright holders pretty strongly. But this case seems so much stronger toward fair use, and still Amazon gave in without a fight. And there's more: check out this New York Times article about excerpting, which brings up many of the same issues.

Why are we so willing to give up our fair use rights?

An instructor left a New York Times article about the HP Lexicon lawsuit on my desk over the weekend because he thought I might be interested. It always amuses me when people at work point me to stories that I've already discovered via fandom.

One of the most interesting things to me about this story is how anti-Rowling all the coverage has been. "Look at the greedy author, protecting her copyrights!" She used to be a media darling, but now they are turning on her.

I do think this article has interesting and compelling things to say about fair use, even if I don't believe this is the best case to champion the cause. What gets me is this: had the Lexicon been complied and presented differently, I would argue that it would count as scholarly commentary -- if it quoted less extensively from the books, if it included the essays on the site (with the permission of the authors, of course), if it were clearly branded as "unauthorized". But none of these things are true. Still, I have more mixed feelings about this case than I used to. Lawrence Lessig is a name that will catch my attention. If his organization is defending the Lexicon, then there might be something to it. Then again, he may be just the sort of crusader who will jump on any "raurgh, copyright holder evil!" bandwagon. As always, more research may be the answer.

T sent me a link to the Espresso Book Machine, a vending machine at the New York Public Library that will print and bind, for free, a book. Not just any book, of course -- for now it's limited to titles that are in the public domain or held by the Open Content Alliance. But still, we're talking hundreds of thousands of books.

I... am not sure how I feel about this.