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Originally posted by Succatash:
Or are you suggesting that there is a new law which will prevent me from sharing this "fan artwork" with my friends?

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Granted, Nia can't come after you in any legal sense since she infringed on copyrights but I'm sure she would like at least credit for putting them together. The interviews though, that's a little stickier and fox probably won't like an open link to their copyrighted material.

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Customers are prohibited from transmitting on or through any of MICROWORLD DOTCOM's services, any material that is, in MICROWORLD DOTCOM's sole discretion, unlawful, obscene, threatening, abusive, libelous, or hateful, or encourages conduct that would constitute a criminal offense, give rise to civil liability, or otherwise violate any local, state, national or international law.

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Originally posted by bonibaru:
They *have* to shut your site down if it comes to your attention. According to copyright law, if they don't defend their copyright, they lose the right to claim it. They're pretty good about not going out and looking for fan sites, but that doesn't mean they can ignore it if it's directly shown to them.

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If Firefly fans want to make "art" because they like the show, that's really great. But that is all it is. It's great, and it helps grow the audience. That's what it is all about.

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Originally posted by ManiacNumberOne:
I would highly disagree with you. Why make those great video's if not to share them. They are offering them for free on their own sites, so why would they not allow them to be mirrored? There could be a few possible reasons. Note: I don't subscribe to any of these beliefs - they are just possibilities. Reason one is they are not true fans. I don't believe that though, or they probably wouldn't have made them, huh? Second possible reason is that they possibly have something going on the side (with which they make money), on their website, and those free video's bring in needed traffic. If that were the reason, I would fully understand. Third possible reason they might not want me to mirror those video's on another site, (and this one's the worst of all) they didn't actually make them, and don't want to get caught saying they did on multiple websites--cause I would surely reference them as the video's source. Fourth reason, they are greedy with the video's they made and with the access rights to them. They want to get credit instead of sharing the joy of Firefly fandom with others. If that were the reason, I would say they are not true fans.

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Who's winning?
I can't really tell, they don't seem to be playing by any civilized rules that I know.
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Originally posted by bonibaru:

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Originally posted by ManiacNumberOne:
Reason one is they are not true fans. I don't believe that though, or they probably wouldn't have made them, huh? Second possible reason is that they possibly have something going on the side (with which they make money), on their website, and those free video's bring in needed traffic. If that were the reason, I would fully understand. Third possible reason they might not want me to mirror those video's on another site, (and this one's the worst of all) they didn't actually make them, and don't want to get caught saying they did on multiple websites--cause I would surely reference them as the video's source. Fourth reason, they are greedy with the video's they made and with the access rights to them. They want to get credit instead of sharing the joy of Firefly fandom with others. If that were the reason, I would say they are not true fans.

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None of those reasons, at least for me.

First: It takes several weeks to make a music video - it's a long and -painstaking process. You don't throw one together in a few hours (not and have it be any good). So no person who is not a true fan is going to bother to take that time.

Second: making money off of a music video is vastly illegal and can land you not only with a C&D order, but under arrest and in jail. Any vidder that's making a profit off their videos is in deep deep trouble.

Third: Hey, this happens, but so far not frequently. And I can vouch for the fact that I made my vids, I have the dark circles under my eyes to prove it :)

Fourth: It's just common courtesy to ask first. Like your parents taught you: don't hit, share your toys, ask people before you do something with their stuff :) Just good netiquette.

I've found the majority of FF fans to be great people, kind, respectful. I'm pleased to see that at least you responded by trying to find the contact info to get in touch with the vidders. That's a refreshing change from that "other thread".

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Originally posted by bonibaru:

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Granted, Nia can't come after you in any legal sense since she infringed on copyrights but I'm sure she would like at least credit for putting them together. The interviews though, that's a little stickier and fox probably won't like an open link to their copyrighted material.

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Ah - but anyone can go to your ISP and tell them that you have a music video on your site, and the ISP will take it down. Nia doesn't have to be the one to do it. They can also then cancel your *entire* site, for violation of TOS agreement, and they don't have to refund your fees or anything like that. In other words, you're up the creek, no paddle.

And you're right about the Interviews. I can even give a specific example: a Witchblade fan site had copies of cast interviews up on their website, that were taken from the official network site. Her ISP received a C&D letter from the TNT lawyers and her entire site was removed because of those interviews.

THOSE are official files that belong to Fox. Fox is notorious for shutting down fan sites - just ask anyone from Buffy, X-Files fandoms that had experience with Fox back when those shows were popular. Check here: http://www.bringers.org.uk/ for lots more info.

Dozens of X-Files and Buffy sites have been pursued and shut down by Fox for not just videos, but fanfiction, wallpapers and graphics, screencaps, quotes, etc. They *have* to shut your site down if it comes to your attention. According to copyright law, if they don't defend their copyright, they lose the right to claim it. They're pretty good about not going out and looking for fan sites, but that doesn't mean they can ignore it if it's directly shown to them.

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Originally posted by Shinetheway:

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Originally posted by ManiacNumberOne:
I would highly disagree with you. Why make those great video's if not to share them. They are offering them for free on their own sites, so why would they not allow them to be mirrored? There could be a few possible reasons. Note: I don't subscribe to any of these beliefs - they are just possibilities. Reason one is they are not true fans. I don't believe that though, or they probably wouldn't have made them, huh? Second possible reason is that they possibly have something going on the side (with which they make money), on their website, and those free video's bring in needed traffic. If that were the reason, I would fully understand. Third possible reason they might not want me to mirror those video's on another site, (and this one's the worst of all) they didn't actually make them, and don't want to get caught saying they did on multiple websites--cause I would surely reference them as the video's source. Fourth reason, they are greedy with the video's they made and with the access rights to them. They want to get credit instead of sharing the joy of Firefly fandom with others. If that were the reason, I would say they are not true fans.

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Who's winning?
I can't really tell, they don't seem to be playing by any civilized rules that I know.
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I just wanted to comment on the idea of a "true fan," because I've been a fan for six years, I adore fandom, much of my life is oriented around it, and I don't think I've ever heard "true fan" used this way.

(I write, personally, so that's what much of my perspective is. All of this can be extended to include any sort of fannish-art producer, whether zines, vids, art, or anything else.)

Fen, when they produce stuff, do not leave themselves at the door. A writer, no matter how good she is, is a person; she isn't just A Writer, without feelings or thoughts or emotions. Writers have bad days, and good days, and emergencies with their kids, and candlelit dinners with their husbands, and car problems, and their leftovers go moldy just like everyone else. They're people. And, when they share stuff, they do so because they love their show, and they love the people around them, and for other reasons that are more personal. Sometimes they DON'T want to share, even--I've written fic for friends that I adamantly do not want public; I enjoyed writing them, but they were private and personal. But that doesn't mean that, once shared, writers forfeit all right over their stories, that their stories now belong to The Void. Writers aren't machines, and creativity doesn't go away just because it's now an internet file.

To be a "true fan" is to love your fandom. Period. Being a "true fan" has nothing to do with whether you are willing to grant blanket permission for every yahoo (not that you are, but some people in fandom are pretty looney-tunes) who wants to post stuff indiscriminately to do so. Personally, I post pretty freely--no passwords, very few "private" stories just between friends, on both my LJ and my website. And I would gut and skin anyone who showed my fanfic to the people who are my source-material. Ditto to people who stole my stories and posted them on their own website as unattributed or wrongly attributed. Being a "true fan" does not mean that you have to give up all claim to what you have worked so long and hard to create.

You mentioned a note on your site that all your files are public domain. I really don't think fan creations are public domain. Someone MADE that vid, spent hours or days or weeks working on it, fussed about the transition in 3:45, worried because they couldn't find the exact right footage for X lyric, or had three perfect shots for Y. Just because you don't know who it was, doesn't mean they don't exist.

The files may be on loan, but they are ultimately the property of their creator, unless they have been formally transferred over in some way (if someone gives away an icon, for instance). If someone said to you, "Happy Birthday! Here's a songvid, just for you," then I would consider you to have a stronger case to do whatever you want with that vid, as long as it isn't going to harm the vidder. And, as silviakundera has said, the plain fact is that if you don't respect people who produce, they tend to stop producing. No actor likes to play to a bad house, and there's nothing MAKING fan creators create.

Finally, your argument that any fan who is "greedy" and wants credit for their work is not a true fan is unfair to them--and to you. For instance, you run a website of which you are obviously proud. You've worked hard on it, doing coding and paying for bandwidth and locating and organizing the files for download. And now you work even harder, making sure that every single file there is properly attributed, contacting vidders and getting permission, and taking down files where permission is refused. I bet you spend hours at a time working on it, and you're justly proud when people thank you for it, using your name and directing their compliments to you. But how would it feel if suddenly, everyone was thanking me? I didn't make the site. I didn't put any work into it. But all of a sudden, everyone in the fandom is all "Thank you, Shine!" or "great new vid, Shine!" and I'm graciously accepting their praise, "oh, you're welcome, you're welcome, I do try," [makes best queenly gestures] and so on. All of your hard work, and none of it credited to you.

You'd be hurt, right? Upset. Pissed off. Frustrated. Something special to you has been taken away. And you'd still be a "true fan" feeling like that. It's not selfishness to want to keep your name attached to your work, it's simple human nature. You're still a "true fan" if you want people to know that, when they broke down crying, or cracked up laughing, or couldn't talk about anything else for three days, that it was YOU who did it.

I understand that you've contacted the vidder who made the vids, and that all of this is probably a bit moot. I'm not really trying to start anything, but I wanted to throw my two cents in, and try and explain in my own awkward way some of what other people have said (probably more eloquently). If you want to talk more, my email is shinetheway@fangirlz.net.

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Originally posted by bonibaru:
Maniac - I just wanted to say that I think you've handled this in a very responsible manner and you should be thanked for it.

So, thank you.

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Originally posted by bonibaru:
Maniac, I wasn't so much replying to you personally as I was quoting your comments in order to offer an explanation, since some people might have had the same thoughts that you were having.

Sigh. Earlier I wrote a post thanking you for handing this with such grace all the way through. Now I think I should take that back. I'm sorry you feel that you have to take posts about an *issue* as a personal attack on *you*.

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Posted by Philomel:
Um, maybe I'm being silly too, but perhaps it would be a good idea if everyone took a deep breath--and maybe waited a day or counted to ten or something--before continuing to post in this thread, because its looking pretty scary, with all the insults and whatnot being thrown around.

Maniac put up the material without knowing, and when his attention was drawn to the artists' wishes, he took it down. And y'know what? He doesn't have to agree with or understand the reasoning of the artist, or with any of us--just like the artist doesn't have to agree with him. He did the right thing anyway. All kinds of words were exchanged, but let's leave it at that.

At this point, if you ask me, this specific issue is dead, folks. Everything that's needed to be said has been said. The material has been removed from both sites. If ya wanna discuss etiquette and fan-related works generally, great, discuss, but sitting around firing off quick insults at each other is like taking the scenic route to the corner of No and Where.

And it's frightening the women.

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Originally posted by ManiacNumberOne:

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I was denied by Nia.

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Nia's taken down her entire site, and so have I, and so has Debchan, and so have the other FF vidders that I know. I have a new FF vid I'm not going to release, and so does Silvia, and so does Shelia, and three other vidders who had vids in progress have stopped working on their vids due in part to what has happened here and what happened on the TWoP board with our vids being burned to CD and distributed without our prior knowledge. Just thinking about it makes my stomach hurt. I'm extremely upset. When I think about posting my new vid, my stomach hurts even more. I'm going to share it with a few friends, and that's it. I have lost my ability to trust people in the fandom that I don't already know very well.

Here's the thing.

Fandom is a community just like the real world. There are things that are, and are not, considered (by most) to be socially acceptable. Common sense and respect are always, always, the best things to use when dealing with other fans. We've all gotten pretty angry over the last couple of days and that's a very sad thing to have happen in such a normally tight-knit community of fans. We all LOVE the show. We've stuck together through some rough times. That doesn't mean we are all going to agree, or get along all the time. But we should try to treat each other with at least a modicum of respect.

Underneath the screen names of Nia, Elke, Bonibaru, Maniac, etc - we are real people with real feelings. We are not just words on a computer screen. We are not just clips set to music. I don't have any obligation to share my "Hallelujah" vid. I did so because I loved the show and I thought that other fans who loved the show would enjoy seeing the vid as an expression of that love for the show.

I am very careful to keep my website, where the vids are posted, out of the eyes of the powers-that-be of the shows I vid to. I go to extra measures to do this, to keep it off of search engines, etc. I am also careful to keep it out of the eyes of the recording artists - you know, the people who shut down Napster - because honestly, I'd be even more worried about getting a nasty legal notice from the guy who's song I used without permission, whether I have disclaimers all over the place or not. Your website is not necessarily as well protected as Nia's, which may be why she does not want you to post the vid there. I don't really feel that's unreasonable for her.

The entire point of being in a fandom community is: we share with each other. We share stories, screen caps, transcripts, thoughts, etc etc because we WANT to. Not respecting the wishes of the people producing these fannish works of art - who invest our time, money, energy, enthusiasm, into this, does not make us want to share. Exposing us to potential legal action, threatening us, implying that we lose any right to say what happens to our work and where it goes once we put it on the internet, does not make them want to keep sharing.

I have felt really betrayed by not only what's happened over the last couple of days regarding mine and others' vids, but by the attitude that I've seen in some of the FF fans - that I don't have a right to request that my vid not be put online anywhere but my site, that it not be brought to the attention of TPTB, etc. The idea that everyone else is ENTITLED to take it and do what they want with it. That is hurtful to me and I feel betrayed by the Firefly fans. I think Nia probably has too. What you did, you did out of ignorance, that's true (and I don't mean that as an insult e.g. "you're ignorant", I mean it as "you didn't know not to". I understand that.

But when a person resorts to name calling and personal insults, that person loses credibility. When fellow fans start dictating to me that I have no rights over the artwork I have worked very hard to make, and should not expect to be treated with respect and courtesy, it is devastating.

People judge the FF fandom on the behavior of its fans toward each other. Right now to an outsider, FF doesn't look like a very nice fandom to be in, because some very vocal fans don't respect others. That's probably the saddest thing of all.

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Posted by Debchan:
I notice this site has all sorts of copyright material on it; screen captures, scripts, and video files. Does the site owner have permission from Mutant Enemy and Fox?

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Originally posted by ManiacNumberOne:
[BHere's how it went down:

I found a great vid.
A few weeks later I saw someone wanted it on the taglog.
I posted saying I had it and would be happy to share, *(as it was unlabelled to creator).
I posted it on my site.

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None of those reasons, at least for me.

First: It takes several weeks to make a music video - it's a long and -painstaking process. You don't throw one together in a few hours (not and have it be any good). So no person who is not a true fan is going to bother to take that time.

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