Fanlib

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Fanlib

This worries me greatly. Not this organisation in particular, but the change in mentality it represents, the attempt to comercialise fanfic.

This bit in particular gives me the heebies:
Notwithstanding the foregoing, FanLib reserves the right at all times to disclose any information as FanLib deems necessary to satisfy any applicable law, regulation, legal process or governmental request, or to edit, refuse to post or to remove any information or materials, in whole or in part, in FanLib's sole discretion...

However, by submitting the Submissions to FanLib, You hereby grant FanLib a non-exclusive, worldwide, and royalty-free license to use, reproduce, distribute, and display the Submissions in connection with the Website.

There is a very good, very detailed post about it here.

The way I see it, if fanfic ever becomes a source of income, the Big Boys will be on it like a ton of bricks, a ship-load of legality will suddenly appear; there will be sound, financial reasons to stamp on amateur fanfic and fandom as we know it will wither and perish.

I say, treat it like it's made of Ebola - stay away. If no one goes there, it will die.

(I'm no fool, I recognise that things are about to change and there's probably litle we can do to stop it, but we can take some control; the slope should be slippiest at our end, not theirs.)

Comments

[gillyp.livejournal.com]

I'll be honest, zines are not my thing and I know they justify the cover price by saying it 'covers costs'; if some of them are making a profit then, that's, at the very least, legally grey - it muddies the water and queers the pitch for us all. But then, like I say, I'm not a fan of zines. I don't buy them or write for them so what do I know?

But even if publishers are *maybe* making some money, the writers aren't - I don;t see how the writers ever will; certainly not through this organisation which makes me ask, why bother with it, when it has the potential to do so much damage?

[rainbowchicken.livejournal.com]

I've bought... one zine, I think, although people have given me several others. Zines are still a way to reach a certain body of fen that only read zines, not online, although that number is shrinking rapidly. Fans of zines say that there's more quality *snort* in zines than online. I say you just gotta know where to look. ;-)

[chelseagirl47.livejournal.com]

I read zines before we had an internet (*feels old*), and at the time, there was a *very* strong code of honor -- and common sense because although zines flew under the copyright radar rather more than online fic, people were fully aware of those issues -- that zines were purely nonprofit. It is true that some people are exceptions to the rule, but the odd exception does not change the fact that most people in the zine world did/do follow that code of honor.

[gillyp.livejournal.com]

I think there's confusion out there because of people who've been profiting from selling zines at cons(?) - if I've understood the arguments correctly.

I'm 99.999% certain that people who produce zines don't make much, if any, money from what they do. I'm 100% certain the writers don't gain anything monetarily from zines.

I'll be honest, I came into fandom in the internet age and have never really seen the point of zines. I do understand that some people like to have a nicely printed, illustrated version of fic, but in the age of the net, when there's so much fic available for free at the click of a button... It's just not for me, but I know there's still a huge market for zines, my only worry is, if people are making a profit, no matter how small, it becomes legally grey and has implications for fandom as a whole.

There's a strong code of honour in fandom as a whole, it seems to me - though a few idiots occassioanally queer the pitch. It's specifically because of that - the 'amateur' aspect of fanfic - that makes me worry about attempts to commercialise it. I do think it's a dangerously slippy slope.

[chelseagirl47.livejournal.com]

I'm just thinking that, from what was being posted in that sub-thread, that the rare excepion was being posited as the rule.

I miss zines in the sense that I do not really enjoy reading fic online -- I spend so much time at a terminal as it is! -- and when I first got into online fandom, I was on a university connection that timed out after a couple of hours (wow, that sounds prehistoric, doesn't it? For some reason undergrads got unlimited time but grad students got one hour peak time and another non-peak.) -- so I used to print out fic anyway. Then it occurred to me how many trees I was killing, so I stopped, but as a result I do read less fic now.