Fen Behaving Badly

[lebateleur]

Arr, Matey META! And lots of it, at that. I suppose this sort of thing is bound to happen to everyone's journal eventually. Anyway, I hold forth on some fennish pet peeves below.

First up is everyone's perennial favorite, fanfiction.net:

the rule breakers:
I’ll be the first to agree that ff.net is allowed to do whatever it wants with its site guidelines, including failing to enforce them - one of my first posts to this journal was about how posting to ff.net is not a right, let alone a Constitutionally-guaranteed right. That said, I’m a chaotic good personality to the core. I believe that a lot of rules – certainly the minor ones - are unnecessary or even counterproductive.

So if you want to post NC-17 fics or scriptfics or unbetaed fics to ff.net, be my guest. It’s a huge site, and you’ll most likely slip under the radar for awhile, but remember that having your fics hosted there is a privilege. If you choose to break the rules and get busted, gripe to your friends and move on. It sucks, but you aren’t being deprived of anything vital, and the 809 people subscribed to the same mailing lists and communities as you don't want to deal with your crossposted Tantrum of Righteous Indignation over having been caught doing something you shouldn't have.


and the haters:
There was a recent post about user abuse of ff.net on fanficrants a few days ago; nothing new there, but one of the responses really bothered me. The commentor's attitude is that of the typical fandom enforcer - someone who seems to enjoy getting people’s fics, or even entire accounts, TOSed. She evaded my question on anyone would 'take great vindictive pleasure' in reporting people and tones down her attitude in her response to my post there, so I’ll ask my question again here:

Why report people? Even if an author is breaking the rules, it’s a really ugly thing to do, especially to someone you don’t know personally. I’m always surprised by how the ff.net fandom enforcers take the bad or rule-breaking fiction posted on the site as a personal affront to them, as if the authors were posting with the express intent of specifically pissing them off. This is obviously not the case, so why not just hit the back button, maybe have a mock or rant for a bit in another community, and move on? Why bother reporting at all?

From what I've heard from the horse's mouth, fandom enforcers report people because of the ‘vindictive pleasure’ factor, and not for any true concern about the rules. They like making a complete stranger’s day shitty. They enjoy doing something obnoxious to someone they’ve never met, whom they have no reason to dislike. What exactly does that say about those people? (And for that matter, the anonymice who go around alerting people - You're being laughed at in Fandom Wank LOLZ!)

I got TOSed by a fandom enforcer. It was annoying, but I have an lj and a shiny Skyehawke account, and strangely, life goes on. What made an impression on me wasn’t that I was reported, but the manner in which it happened. I had stories up that broke the rules. The story I was reported for was not one of them. It could have been a mistake, but my reporter went to the trouble of tracking me down to send a condescending email explaining why I’d been reported – she obviously wanted a negative reaction from me, and sought me out when I didn't provide one to her satisfaction. She wasn’t concerned about a violation of the posting guidelines, she was trying to pick a fight.


Xing's willing executioners:
So fandom enforcers are more concerned about upsetting people than improving fanfic. And even if they were solely motivated by a desire to clean up the quality at ff.net, reporting fics is not the way to go about it - in fact, it’s counterproductive. Think about it for a moment. Most of the fiction posted to ff.net breaks the rules in some way, but Xing doesn’t need to bother doing anything about it because the enforcers are already doing his job for him. Why should he expend time and effort to police his site (or hire others to do so) when he’s already got a volunteer workforce willing to do it for him, and for free, no less? By reporting fics themselves, the enforcers are taking all the pressure off of the site administrators to systematically address the problem.


And now onto fanart, in which we learn that:

it's not stealing if they're foreign:
I'm not a fan artist myself, so I didn't have much of an opinion on fanart use one way or the other. That changed once I started going to doujinshi events and meeting the artists in person. A lot of them were quite surprised that I was actually bothering to buy the doujinshi from them, instead of stealing it from them online like all Westerners do. Then there was the circle that was reluctant to give me their site URL so I could mail order their sold-out djs because they were afraid I was going to steal their art and put it on my site/lj. The sole reason for this suspicion – I was a Western fan. Think about that for a minute.

Or better yet, imagine if it was you, and you suddenly found some of your fanfiction – even just an uncredited excerpt - on a Japanese site. “Oh, but we can’t really speak English, so we couldn’t ask,” the justification goes, “We never dreamed you’d find it on a Japanese fansite, tee hee! And hey, aren’t you stealing from the creators too, just by using their characters? Why should you care if I turn around and steal from you?” How would you react to that?

You’d probably think it sucks. Yes, the fan artists are stealing from the creators, but I’d like to think there’s honor among thieves. So you steal art from some Japanese artist’s fanpage and pop it on your site. No harm done. But by that token, what’s to stop you from taking art from their page, or her page, or from any of the artists here, and using it without permission? After all, you’re just doing it because you like their art so much (but not enough to ask or credit them). And it’s all stealing from the original creators, right? Yet somehow, people’s attitudes differ when Western artists are concerned – probably because they know that if they steal from a Western artist they'll get caught and called on it. And if it’s something you wouldn’t do to a Western artist, what makes a Japanese fan artist any different? The excuses you use to justify stealing someone else's art don't magically become more valid with distance.


In case you still need convincing:
Manipulating someone else’s fanart without their permission sucks. I’ll admit that I’m more open to manipulations of the original product – say lj layouts from Death Note scans versus lj layouts from Death Note doujinshi scans – because there are questions of fair use, and despite what Western corporations think, fandom at its most basic is like a tumor metasticizing throughout Internet culture, providing free publicity for the original product as it grows. But fanworks are different.

There’s nothing really stopping anyone from doing a photomanip or making an lj icon out of someone else’s fanart. But to offer another analogy, what if I was to take someone’s fanfic and rewrite it to suit my tastes, or take a chapter or two from another author’s story and write my own fanfic based on their fanfic. There’s nothing stopping me, or any other fan, from doing that - except that it just seems lame. People are willing to respect the rights of fan authors – maybe that Saiyuki author or FMA author or whoever doesn’t want me to play around with their story – so why not respect the fan artists too?


So in other words, play nice, kids.

これで以上です。

Comments

[scribblemoose]

*applauds*

[stormcloude]

So what about people who buy the doujinshi? Are they then allowed to scan it in for use as, say, an icon or a wallpaper? Where do you see that falling under fair use?

(As opposed to someone doing an LJ layout from scans of official manga that they DLed off the net and didn't bother to buy?)

Just curious, because I think if I own the source and want to use it, I should be able to.

[lebateleur.livejournal.com]

Ask first and then respect the wishes of the circle, whatever they may be. Out of curiosity, how do you feel about using Western fan artists' work? If you purchased a commission from an American fan artist, would you feel within your rights to use it in a webpage layout without asking permission or even informing that artist? What if they found out about it and asked you to stop?

I buy all the manga that I read, so I have to admit I hadn't considered the scanslation layout question. Still, I do think there's a difference in degree between sampling a professional mangaka's work versus a dj circle that fights to break even on printing costs.

[ook.livejournal.com]

First off, there's two different kinds of art/fiction theft. There is the blatantly fraudulent theft where another's work is passed off as the thief's own work. And then there's the type of theft where someone is so excited by the work in question (generally artwork) that they want to show it to everyone (by icons, fan sites, scanning and sharing). The first type of art theft is malicious. The second is simply fan enthusiasm run amuck and you would think the Japanese fans might be able to understand this a little better (especially since the Japanese are such enthusiastic fans themselves).

I think the incidents of fraudulent/malicious art theft are really few and far between (but it does happen...it happened recently on DevArt where some teenager posted the artwork of several different HP fan artists and tried to claim ALL of it was her's). These occassional incidents (like everything in fandom where fandom wank takes over) tend to get blown way out of proportion.

Seriously, the VAST majority of Western fans don't seem to even LIKE the Japanese fan artists much -- Westerners don't care for the stylized anime art conventions (of course, I'm sure this would probably offend the Japanese fans, as well). I know that most Western HP fans sure don't care for the Japanese anime art style. One thing I do know though is that Westerners despise art and story thieves (where credit is taken for another's work) and Westerners will move mountains to destroy discredit said thief as quickly as possible.

Anyway, one can't just hide forever. There's always a certain amount of risk any time you choose to share something (art, writing, ideas, opinions) with the public at large. You have to decide if the payoff (attention, money, fame, popularity) is worth that risk. You have to be willing to gamble that there's more of a payoff to be gained by coming out in the open than staying safely hidden. And any time you show something you made to anyone (online, publishing, in an art gallery) you stand the chance of being "ripped off," or you could be "discovered."

Just think if the creators/owners of licensed properties like Pokemon and Dragonball Z had had a similar attitude about Westerners. They would never have made a kazillion bucks off of Western kids. The Japanese fan artists and writers need to learn to think BIGGER. For every thief, there's potentially dozens/hundreds of people who WOULD appreciate a Circle's work and would pay money to obtain it, but they can't do it unless the work is accessible in the first place.

There will always be clueless idiots, although the malicious art/writing thieves always seem to be teenagers. I think many of them to do it to gain popularity which moves us into the area of online cliques and the constant need to be the center of attention. Remember that in high school, POPULARITY seems to be the only thing that matters and so this need carries over to online behavior.

[lebateleur.livejournal.com]

Agreed about the different intents of the people who use/steal/borrow other's art, but I think the feelings of the artist are as important as the motivations of the person using the art. If I was to suddenly find my art popping up all over the place without my pesmission or even a credit to me, it wouldn't matter to me what the thieves were doing it because they liked my work, especially if I was greeted by a cavalier attitude when confronting them - Oh, it's the Internet, cant's stop me; you're stealing too; didn't think you'd mind; couldn't be assed to try and ask you; basically, I don't care about your wishes at all, too bad - I'd be more pissed off than flattered.

Given what fandoms one plays in, the VAST majority of Western fans do like Japanese art - they wouldn't be playing in manga/anime land if they didn't. I think the fact that it's drawn by Japanese people lends a sort of 'not really fan art' aura to it - it's just there for the taking in other words. Once one person takes images from 'some Japanese fansite' they pop up everywhere. It's easy to understand why the fan artists themselves find this attitude obnoxious.

I honestly don't understand why more Japanese circles don't sell their dj directly to Western audiences - if foreigners living in Japan cam make $50 a dj on ebay, not including shipping, why can't the original circles do the same? It's a total mystery to me.

[ook.livejournal.com]

Yes, the vast majority of Western fans certainly do like Japanese art, but for some reason a lot of the Western Harry Potter fans don't care for it. I can't explain it as I think the Japanese fan art is uniformly excellent. I suppose part of the disinterest is that the Japanese fan artists don't promote themselves in forums where Western HP fans hang out. For example, I only know of a couple Japanese HP fan artists on LJ, but I know there's a lot more on the internet.

And yes, taking and displaying artwork without permission of the artist is wrong no matter the reason, but I think that the fans who attempt to pass off other's artwork as their own are simply reprehensible.

[stormcloude]

I'd feel it was within my rights, yes, if I commissioned it, however, I would inform the artist or make it a point that they knew that's why I was commissioning it. Most western artists I've had dealings with have no problems with it. There's tons of icons floating around with PL Nunn's work on them- by the people who comissioned the art. It's the stealing and passing off as someone else's that they tend to have issues with.

If they found out and asked me to stop, of course I would. I think that's more an issue of basic human decency and how you were raised to treat other people though.

[lebateleur.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. I think most Japanese artists wouldn't have problems with it either, except there's a huge precedent of Westerners not bothering to ask in the first place, and they don't bother because it's just 'some Japanese artist.' I could conceivable make an entire lj layout right now from the images on PL Nunn's site. She might not be able to stop me, but I doubt she'd appreciate it. I wouldn't do it to her, and I wouldn't do it to a dj circle either.

I was thinking more about your earlier point about what rights the person who purchased the art has, and it is a slippery slope. But you're right about the decency part of it, which is what I was trying to get at above.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Fanart is as fanart does, and I don't play in those waters. But I probably wouldn't be offended if someone took one of my stories and used it as a basis for her own stuff. That's where the oral tradition thing comes in. 'Thetis of the shining breasts'- ohh neat epithet I'll use it in my next epic.

Plagiarism is one thing; reworking a source is another. I've seen the Japanese do it- someone's cool trope borrowed and reworked over various doujinshi, and I thought it was neat. I need hardly say, if it was a Japanese reworking my stuff- or hell, just translating it- or hell, just sticking it up on her website- I'd be over the moon. But that's a little different, not to say unlikely.

[lebateleur.livejournal.com]

Sure, but there's a difference between oral tradition perpetuating itself and taking someone else's work and pretending it's yours by either willfully lying about it or failing to credit the source. Fandom is an interesting mix of pop culture folklore and more modern storytelling methods - if it was straight folklore, none of us would attach our names to our fics. The fact that we do says something about our desire to be recognised as the story's originator, even if only by pen name.

I've tried translating some of my stuff into Japanese in the privacy of my own home, and it's a total lost cause. I'd love to see someone do it for me, if only to know how my phrasing would be written in Japanese. If a Japanese found my stuff worthy of sharing with Japanese fandom, I'd be thrilled as well, but I would be slightly less thrilled if I wasn't credited as the author.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Someone else's work to me is the actual words. Take those without credit and I peeve. Someone else's ideas OTOH- mh. Not only are ideas a dicey area- who would be ass enough to say 'Hakkai and Gojou on a rainy night is *my* idea, you stole it from me!!!' and youandyouandyouandyou...- but how do I know that my beautifully thought up trope didn't in fact occur to her quite independently?

Even if it's something pretty much provably my own idea (because wrong, ie Hakkai's shouldercloth being part of a monk's robe) if someone mentions Hakkai's monk's shouldercloth I feel flattered. Look, I created fanon! But if they then wrote an AN to say 'I got this idea from mjj's fic Gonou' it'd be a letdown. Oh I'm not fanon. You mean people need to be /told/ that came from Gonou? I go away to weep in chagrin.

I'd rather have a deft in-fandom reference that everyone gets (or is assumed to get) than clumsy footnoting all over the place. "To screw or not to screw" Gojou muses; who would AN that with 'This line is adapted from Shakespeare's Hamlet'? Simply, it's more gratifying to assume an idea is iterated because it's quasi-fanon than because the writer was intent on theft. Too much snarling over source and intellectual rights actually prevents the growth of our oral tradition thing called fanon.

[lebateleur.livejournal.com]

To me, it's the words and the combination of ideas both. Taking an idea from your fic because it appealed is just inspiration - that's how all stories are written. But if someone wrote a 'new' fic that just happened to follow the entire progression of Gonou, I imagine your reaction would be different. Fanon and inspiration from fandom I have no problems with, but there's still a line that can be crossed.

On a completely unrelated note, I can easily think of two Saiyuki authors who would AN a Shakespeare paraphrase. For what that's worth.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

(I can think of one who would, is why I don't read her.)

I suppose it would depend how closely it followed the progress of Gonou. What gets changed? Language? Incidents? I still think I'd find it interesting as an exercise in how that person read Gonou, like van Gogh copying Hiroshige: how utterly different when it's a western eye seeing. Like the dj retellings I did, and the stuff that had to be changed there to make them comprehensible.

Of course I *might* be a bit more exercised if all my Saiyuuki fic wasn't so old as to be history...

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

Plagiarism and the creation of a derivative work are two entirely different things, though both are considered "theft of intellectual property" under current copyright law, which quite frankly is absurd. And both to my mind are different than taking a fanart without permission and making a personal layout of it.

I have an odd position with fan art. I don't draw much myself and what I do draw is hardly the sort to get stolen. But if it's a fic I posted online, I personally don't have problems with people archiving my fanfic on their sites, without permission, as long as they credit it to me; I like to know where it ends up, but when I stumble across a story of mine somewhere I'm more likely to be honored than offended. I know several artists who are very upset when their art gets used without permission in layouts and such, even when properly credited, but while I respect their wishes, I don't quite see it the same, even though I don't use fanart myself. It's not the same as plagiarism, to my mind (e.g. it's be different if I found a story of mine posted somewhere that someone else claimed to have written). I've wondered if one of the reasons Japanese fanartists get upset over Western fanart theft is because they are so rarely credited, and even if they are, if they don't know English it can be hard for them to check - so there's no way for them to know that the Western fan isn't claiming the work as their own. (especially since from what I've seen, J-fen rarely use official images on sites, so all the work there is automatically assumed to be their own creation.)

It's different when profit is involved, obviously. Though when it comes to doujinshi, things get pretty dicey for fans. The fact of the matter is, it's hard to get doujinshi in America; Ebay's very irregular, there are no used shops or events, and while some circles do sell online, not all do, and not all ship internationally. At least some people downloading djs aren't doing it because they want them for free, but because there's no other way to get 'em. And then there's dj scanlations...scanlations are a whole 'nother kettle of worms, though. I'm not saying that dj scans or 'lations are right, but...it's a terribly muddy ground for a fan to tread, when the choice is scanlation vs. not getting to read a marvelous work at all.

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

--also, gotta say, I've never been TOSed on ff.net or run into an enforcer, but geeze. don't get it. most of the fandoms I've been in lately, the pit of voles is their only real archive, and wading through the garbage gets frustrating...but while I've left an obnoxious review now and again, I never thought about reporting anyone. Not to mention the rules are unclear enough that you could get near anyone booted, if you had a grudge against a writer...

[lebateleur.livejournal.com]

Absolutely - the fanficrants post that started me on this subject was about someone who got TOSed for one 'script-like' line in a fic. That's ridiculous. The thing that really gets me about the enforcers is that most of them are fanficcers too, and their private archives are ripe candidates for TOSing from their ISPs, thanks to the copyright issues. Of course, this doesn't seem to occur to them.

Obnoxious reviews are a different thing entirely - I wish fandom was more honest in its criticisms more often, and I'm firmly in the public posting =/= freedom from public criticism camp.

[lebateleur.livejournal.com]

I dunno. It's very interesting that most fan artists are very opposed to others using their work without permission, while most non-fan artists have little to no problem with it, or assume that it's somehow 'different.' I don't draw fanart myself, but when I see pretty much the entire fan artist demographic assuring fen over and over that yes, it is stealing and similar to plagiarism of stories and so forth, then I have to assume that it is, because I'm hearing it from the horses' mouths.

I have no problems with people archiving my stories without permission, as long as my name is attached. But if I found my fics with a different name, or even no name, being traded about willy nilly, I think I'd be pretty upset. I imagine the fanart issue is similar.

You hit the nail on the head with the Japanese artists - their take is 100% make your own art. They've even got a website coalition (http://www6.big.or.jp/~aira/ofp_e.html) for it. That's the English language page. It's especially illuminating to see what they say about Western fen on the Japanese-only page. It may just be a difference in cultural attitudes, but man, it sucks to think that most Japanese fen think those things about us as a whole.

I'm mostly agreed with you on the scanned doujinshi question, because it's possible for dj circles to sell their stuff in the West, and they don't, and because most fen I know will spend exorbitant amounts of money to get hard copies of djs they like. That said, I still think it's wrong to make page layouts or whatever from doujinshi, if only because the creators are so violently opposed to it.