Koalafications

“I do what I do because it’s right. Because it’s decent. And above all, it’s kind. It’s just that. Just kind. If I run away today, good people will die. If I stand and fight, some of them might live. Maybe not many and maybe not for long. Hey, you know, maybe there’s no point in any of this at all. But it’s the best I can do, so I’m going to do it. And I’ll stand here doing it till it kills me. Who I am is where I stand. And where I stand is where I fall.”

Because here’s the first thing: fanfiction falls under fair use, for reasons, which is why so much of it exists and you don’t hear many stories about people being sued for it or creators coming after fans anymore. You’ve technically been able to post fanfic of Anne Rice stuff, but here’s the second thing: although plenty of people did post anyway, people often didn’t out of either respect for her wishes (because she was expressly against fanfic authors writing about her characters, a stance I’m given to understand she reversed in her later years) or the fandom genetic-memory fear that she would personally try to come for them.

But here’s the third thing: the estate can’t come for you directly unless you list direct contact info on AO3. Because what are they going to do? Leave a comment with a takedown notice, with no way to know if you have notifications turned on? No! AO3 has no native way to directly contact any of the authors archiving their work there. If they want to get to you, they have to go through AO3, and as long as you’re following AO3’s rules (which again are literally in place to protect you against exactly this kind of thing and specifically protect you from this actual person/estate, as her history is part of the reason AO3 exists) AO3 is going to tell them they have no ability to make you take it down. You actually won’t hear from the estate for posting on AO3, because AO3 would be the ones dealing with it for you.

So like. Take a moment and appreciate the folks who are posting freshly because they feel safer with her gone, sure. But also take a moment to appreciate that AO3 exists and protects us, and has been protecting us from their first day.

whether you make money from it or not doesn’t change a thing and i don’t know AO3 but unless they specifically have some kind of litigation fund, precisely for this, i don’t know why they would be uniquely nonresponsive to dmca

Additionally, when I said fanfiction falls under “fair use” I wasn’t just saying it was fair game. The USA (which is where this matters because that’s where Anne was and where I’m pretty sure AO3 is) has a doctrine within copyright law that allows limited use of copyrighted material without having to acquire permission from the copyright holder. Fair Use is used as a defense to copyright infringement claims on some things that might otherwise be considered infringement- like fanfiction.

And it’s even ABLE to be used as a defense wrt fanfiction because one of the things used to defend fanfiction is that it is transformative/derivative.

Works of fanfiction are more likely to constitute fair use if they are “transformative” with respect to the original work, if they are non-commercial, if they appropriate relatively little of the original work, and/or if they do not tend to detract from the potential market for or value of the original work.

Which is why being not-for-profit isn’t, as you seem to think, not important. It’s actually quite literally one of the backbones of why fanfiction is typically considered fair use and able to be produced and shared publicly without actually breaking copyright laws.

As for the AO3 stuff, there’s an entire article on Wikipedia with more and more accurate explanations about what happened and why, but here’s an important excerpt of it, with bold added by me for the deeply relevant bits:

[In 2007], a group of fans who engage in creating fan works and are part of the larger fan community founded the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW).[37] OTW has since advocated the legitimacy of fan fiction due its transformative nature. OTW’s position is that fan fiction and other fan labor products constitute copyright fair use under 17 U.S.C. § 107 because they add “new meaning and messages to the original” work,[38] and thus fall under the exemption to U.S. copyright law the Supreme Court defined in Campbell[39] and which was later revisited and followed in Suntrust.[40] OTW’s vision includes seeing “all fannish works recognized as legal and transformative and … accepted as a legitimate creative activity.”[41] Toward this end OTW works to educate fan writers and published writers about copyright laws, particularly the open legal questions around fan fiction and other fan works.

OTW also maintains its own fan fiction archive, the Archive of Our Own, commonly called AO3. All fan fiction on the site is recognized as non-profit derivative works.[42] 

It’s not that AO3 is “unresponsive” to DMCA/copyright notifications. What I meant was that the org that runs AO3, the OTW, is willing and ready, legally, to go to bat for fandom and for the rights of fanfiction authors to produce and publicly share fanfiction without profit (and are actually even working to change copyright laws to specifically protect fanfiction authors). If you’re following the rules AO3 set forth and someone wants to come for something you posted on AO3, they will almost certainly have to go through AO3’s legal dept, and AO3 is ready for them. Because the OTW knows that when someone comes for one of us, they come for all of us.

So… as long as we sticking to the rules of fair use, CAN someone try to come for us on AO3? Enngh. Well, maybe you’re right, they can try, I suppose- if they want an expensive headache that is very likely to go nowhere… but I don’t think even the rat has crossed that boundary.

And the update

https://bctgm.org/2021/10/08/5-ways-to-support-the-kelloggstrike/

Kellogg’s is so big that “don’t buy their products” is virtually impossible, not to mention not possible for many individuals and families who can’t afford anything else. Not to mention that it is not a strategy the union is asking you to use.

That’s right- the union and the strikers are NOT asking for a boycott.

(If demand for products keeps going at its usual rate, but there is no one creating a supply, that creates building pressure on the Company to actually be forced to listen to the union in order to be able to meet the demand.)

According to the link above, here are the union’s ACTUAL requests:

Sign their petition.

Join a picket line or drop off food/supplies at one.

Send a solidarity letter.

Donate to a Strike Fund.

Help spread the word on social media.

Notice how “don’t buy Kellogg’s products” is NOWHERE on this list.

The link above does include things like a link to the petition, lists of picket lines in need of support, address lists to send support letters, and links to Strike Funds that need help.

The boilerplate “don’t buy their stuff” doesn’t help anyone, and doesn’t help the union or the strikers. In fact, it’s sometimes the opposite- if enough people go around claiming that the strikers want a boycott, the company can use that at the negotiating table to say that the strikers are in “bad faith”, and refuse to talk, or worse, try to use it to fire them.

Whenever there is a strike, find out what that PARTICULAR union wants as help. Now, it might actually be a boycott. But the union & the strikers will tell you that. I know this goes against popular preconceived notions about “what a strike is” and “how a strike works”, but in most cases, it will NOT be a boycott.

And in this case of the Kellogg’s strike, it is definitely not.

Keep buying the products. It’s putting pressure on Kellogg’s that a solution needs to be found.

Donate to Strike Funds, write letters of support, drop off food at picket lines. Make posts on social media about how reprehensible you think it is that the company would rather hire scabs than listen to their employees and treat them with dignity.

The best way to support any strike is to listen to what the strikers want you to do, and then do that.

Obligatory plug for the IWW union, “Industrial Workers of the World”, iww.org

You do not have to be an industrial worker to join it, or even employed at all. If you have a union to join, go for it! Or check out this one too. Unions are a great power- if they weren’t, companies and corporations wouldn’t be fighting against them tooth and nail.

DO NOT BUY KELLOGGS CEREAL.