Spontaneous Musings

Fair use is a legal doctrine that promotes freedom of expression by permitting the unlicensed use of copyright-protected works in certain circumstances. Section 107 of the Copyright Act provides the statutory framework for determining whether something is a fair use and identifies certain types of uses—such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research—as examples of activities that may qualify as fair use. Section 107 calls for consideration of the following four factors in evaluating a question of fair use:

Purpose and character of the use, including whether the use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes: Courts look at how the party claiming fair use is using the copyrighted work, and are more likely to find that nonprofit educational and noncommercial uses are fair. This does not mean, however, that all nonprofit education and noncommercial uses are fair and all commercial uses are not fair; instead, courts will balance the purpose and character of the use against the other factors below. Additionally, “transformative” uses are more likely to be considered fair. Transformative uses are those that add something new, with a further purpose or different character, and do not substitute for the original use of the work.
Nature of the copyrighted work: This factor analyzes the degree to which the work that was used relates to copyright’s purpose of encouraging creative expression. Thus, using a more creative or imaginative work (such as a novel, movie, or song) is less likely to support a claim of a fair use than using a factual work (such as a technical article or news item). In addition, use of an unpublished work is less likely to be considered fair.
Amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole: Under this factor, courts look at both the quantity and quality of the copyrighted material that was used. If the use includes a large portion of the copyrighted work, fair use is less likely to be found; if the use employs only a small amount of copyrighted material, fair use is more likely. That said, some courts have found use of an entire work to be fair under certain circumstances. And in other contexts, using even a small amount of a copyrighted work was determined not to be fair because the selection was an important part—or the “heart”—of the work.
Effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work: Here, courts review whether, and to what extent, the unlicensed use harms the existing or future market for the copyright owner’s original work. In assessing this factor, courts consider whether the use is hurting the current market for the original work (for example, by displacing sales of the original) and/or whether the use could cause substantial harm if it were to become widespread.

In addition to the above, other factors may also be considered by a court in weighing a fair use question, depending upon the circumstances. Courts evaluate fair use claims on a case-by-case basis, and the outcome of any given case depends on a fact-specific inquiry. This means that there is no formula to ensure that a predetermined percentage or amount of a work—or specific number of words, lines, pages, copies—may be used without permission.

Authors know more about their worlds than you do, but maybe don’t have all the answers. If you believe that only the text matters, then an author’s thoughts, beliefs, etc about the world they constructed on the page are no more relevant than your thoughts or anyone else’s; if it’s not on the page, it’s not canon. And that’s fine for you to believe, but as the author, I certainly don’t believe it, because among other things I know how much of the world I have to create in order to support what’s on the page. I have to know more about my world than my readers do, otherwise it’s going to be difficult for me to keep consistency of action (and consequence) across the work, both in characters and the world in general.

But, as it happens, sometimes writers and readers don’t find the same things important, with regard to the worldbuilding. As a result, readers sometimes think about certain things more than the authors have, and the authors get caught flatfooted when readers want to know more about that particular thing. Alternately sometimes the author kind of bullshits through something because they don’t think it’s important and later it comes back to bite them and has to be explained away.

It is midnight and I should be in bed. But oddly wired. I think PMS? Maybe not. Maybe so. Just finished betaing the first 20 pages of a fanfic that I wrote and posted to teaattheford tonight. It's the one I wrote last year but didn't finish. No not the evil fanfic, that's already there still unfinished. The other one. Which I hope to finish this weekend and post complete to that board. Little fearful. But nice to have it someplace intact. Was almost impossible to locate in my journal.

At any rate, while betaing the thing I got to thinking about fanfic and fandom. Two things that are relatively new to me. I've never been in a fandom before BTVS and to be honest, there are times that I look at fandom and think, yes, the word and it's dictionary meaning fits. Fanatic. Crazy. Obsessed person. Okay. Needing approval and validation through outside means. Yep. Yet, the people I've met have also been incredibly generous and fun. So like everything else? Double-edged experience.

Fanfic provides one with a comfort zone. You are working with established characters and an established back-story. You are also writing for an audience who knows possibly as much if not more about these characters than you do. This provides you, the fanfic writer, with the ability to skim over certain things that writers of original fiction cannot skim over, which is not a good habit to get into. You do not have to describe backstory or deal with exposition. You do not have to provide as much detailed description. Your audience already knows these characters, they know their back-story, where they came from, who they are. So unlike a writer of original fiction, you can sort of push past the tough stuff and get right to the meat or heart of things. Unless of course you are doing an alternate universe fic - then you have to tell more. There is of course a down-side to your audience being overly familar with your characters - they have their own ideas about them, own wants and desires, and if these wants and desires conflict with yours - well, you lose them.

Why is it written? To fill in gaps in the narrative. The writer and audience are left unsatisfied in some way, they want something and are uncertain what it is. Television serials are excellent for fanfic - because they have gaps in their narrative structure. The more loose the show is written and by loose, I mean the writer deliberately does not tell you everything about the characters or what has happened to them, the more likely you will see fanfic on it. Action-adventure/mystery/sci-fi and western serials are perfect - since their focus is more on action than relationships, they leave a lot of things open-ended. And being a serial - they can't quite let any of their characters stay together - another perfect opening for a fanfic to be written, because we all yearn for happy endings or endings period and tv serials rarely have endings.

Coming online tonight, I read one of the posts on my flist then read a response, and smiled. The post was asking if anyone knew of any NON-fanfic writers who explored myth in their essays and could speak about them and explored fandom. The person who responded recommended three FAN-FIC writers, big name ones, who to my knowledge have never written any essays on the verse and haven't really read any. I laughed. When I was writing essays on the Buffy Cross & Stake board in 2002-2003 - then later, briefly, Angel's Soul, the board was split. You could at one time only post fanfic with permission and only on the non-spoiler board, without spoilers. On ATPO - All Things Philosophical About Buffy and Angel - you rarely posted fanfic, not sure if they permitted it or not - short ones, maybe. Just links were allowed. But essays could be as long as you wanted and no permission was necessary. Slayage.tv - the academic site - only did essays.

I wrote over 400 pages during the series run in 2002-2005, but I'm willing to bet that the majority of the B/S fanfic writers on my own correspondence list never read one of them.  It's not because I wasn't well known - I wrote and posted on the most trafficed board online at the time - BC&S Spoiler Board which had over 400 visitors a day. Or accessible. But we ran in different circles. I read them, but then I read both essays and fic. A lot of people I know in fandom either read one or the other. There is an equal number of people I'm certain that have never read a fanfic, but have read quite a few essays. A friend of mine, soon to be published writer, refuses to read fanfic, sees it as silly and only read essays, even bought a book of essays. There is a split in fandom and people are very weird about it - but then people are weird about anything they get passionate about.

At any rate this persuades me to create a meme for the essay writers - everyone names their favorite fanfic writers, but I haven't seen anyone list their favorite essay writers, ever. Not once.  So, Who are your favorite Buffy/Angel essay writers? They had to have written an essay on the series. They cannot be someone known for writing lots of fanfic on it and have oh, written a brief post or two. No, You can only name people who have written at least one to two essays and have posted those essays someplace on line. Also if you are an essay writer, you are not allowed to name yourself. Name at least five. You can name ten. And if you can't think of any and you've written fanfic? Shame on you.. Go to these websites and start reading: www.teaatheford.com, www.atpobtvs.com. Who knows you might get some new ideas.

Who were my favorite essayists?

( 10 favorite essayists, in no particular order. )