ermingarden: medieval image of two people with books (reading)
A fun meme borrowed from [personal profile] ysilme:

How big are your fandoms? List them in order of the number of works posted for them on AO3.

I'm doing this for the fandoms I'm currently active (i.e., regularly reading and/or writing fic) in. As of approximately 6 PM Eastern Time on March 20, 2022, the work count is as follows:

1) Star Wars – All Media Types has 192,780;

2) 魔道祖师 - 墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù has 54,335,

3) The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth – J. R. R. Tolkien has 21,340,

4) The Lord of the Rings – J. R. R. Tolkien has 21,168, and

5) 天官赐福 - 墨香铜臭 | Tiān Guān Cì Fú - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù has 9,221.

I'm totally shocked – MDZS has over twice as many works on AO3 as does the Silm or (bookverse) LotR!

The MDZS novel serialization on JJWXC only began in 2015, and CQL only came out in 2019! (2019 was also the year the fan translation of the novel by Exiled Rebels was completed.) CQL has 38,138 works; 9,883 of those are not also tagged with MDZS, bringing the total for the umbrella fandom across media types up to almost 65k! (There's no "All Media Types" umbrella tag for MDZS; there are 250 works tagged with the donghua but neither the novel or CQL.) TOLKIEN J. R. R. – Works and Related Fandoms, the broadest Tolkien umbrella, beats that with 84,066 – but the oldest of the Tolkien works is (back)dated to 2003, and The Hobbit was published in 1937!
ermingarden: medieval image of a bird with a tonsured human head and monastic hood (Default)
I bought paid time for the first time ever, so it's time to ask some burning questions by way of Dreamwidth polls!

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: Just the Poll Creator, participants: 15

How do you feel about high school AUs?

I usually like them
0 (0.0%)

I never like them
3 (20.0%)

I usually don't like them, but I've read some I liked
9 (60.0%)

I like them in some fandoms, but dislike them in others
2 (13.3%)

I've never read a high school AU
4 (26.7%)



Feel free to elaborate in the comments!
ermingarden: medieval image of a bird with a tonsured human head and monastic hood (Default)
The OTW legal team released this statement about Post+ today. It's largely focused on legal risk to individual fan creators and makes a very good point about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) that hadn't occurred to me:
"Internet platforms (including tumblr and YouTube and all the other ones) act as a form of insulation from lawsuits. That insulation happens in the context of DMCA takedown notices–rather than suing an individual poster, the copyright owner just asks the platform to take it down. It’s always up to users to decide what to post, and–in the very (very, very!) unlikely event that a copyright holder would decide to sue rather than just relying on the takedown process–users always bear the risk of being sued."
What it understandably doesn't address, but what is I think a more immediate concern for many people, is the legal risk to Tumblr itself as a platform, since it is (a) explicitly encouraging fan creators to monetize and (b) taking a direct cut of that revenue. It's going to be interesting to see how things play out, though if very few fan creators actually sign up for Post+ – meaning the revenue Tumblr acquires from monetized fanworks is negligible – it may be a nonissue; and I might just be moving in the wrong circles, but I don't know a single person willing to touch Post+ with a ten-foot pole.

(As always: I am not an expert in copyright law. Not even a little bit.)
[Edited 8/7 to make it clear I'm not criticizing OTW.]
ermingarden: medieval image of a bird with a tonsured human head and monastic hood (Default)
Tl;dr: please don't try to make money off your fanfic.

According to a Tumblr spokesperson, "Tumblr’s Post+ will push the boundaries of what’s considered money-making content on the internet: Shitposters, memelords, artists, fan fiction writers, all of the above and everyone in between will be able to create content while building their community of supporters, and getting paid with Post+" (emphasis added).

I'm no expert in copyright law, but creating a platform explicitly advertised as a way to monetize fanfic seems like a very bad idea. There is a reason AO3 is very strict about references to payment! If a lot of fanfic writers and fanartists do sign up for this Post+ thing, you can bet there's going to be a legal battle. Tumblr may think they can win – or maybe the company that currently owns Tumblr simply thinks taking the risk is the only way the site can remain marginally profitable. Honestly, even after kicking around on the site for a decade, I'm not super fussed about the fate of good old Tungle Dot Hell. But although anyone who's been around in fandom even a few years will remember the days when disclaimers were really common and there was a general fear of lawsuits over fic, I'm a little worried that young fan creators will sign up for Post+ and get caught up in a lawsuit.

There isn't a huge amount of case law about the legal status of fanfic. The OTW's position, and consequently the dominant attitude in at least the circles of fandom I inhabit, is that fan creations are legal under the fair use principle in US copyright law, but the question isn't completely settled. In my read of the situation, a big reason there isn't a lot of precedent is that under current conditions, it just isn't profitable to sue fan creators! Broadly speaking, no one is making money off of fanfic, and fan creators just don't have enough money to make individual lawsuits profitable. My guess is that if a suit against a fan creator actually went to trial, and the copyright holder prevailed, it would be impossible to prove actual damages (i.e., lost profits for the copyright holder), disgorgement of profits would be fruitless (since fan creators aren't making any profit), and a judge would presumably award statutory damages at the low end of the prescribed range, which probably wouldn't even be enough to cover legal fees. (See 17 U.S.C. § 504.) But if Tumblr starts making money by taking a cut of subscriptions to what basically amounts to paid fanfic, suddenly there's a nice, fat target for litigation. Plus, a major factor a court considers in determining whether something qualifies as fair use is whether anyone's making money off it; making money off your fic not only makes you a more tempting target for a suit, it makes you far less likely to prevail.
Page generated Jul. 29th, 2025 11:07 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios