Let's hear fandom roar...

[elisi]

Icon by scarah2!!!!!

The FanLib thing is not going away. Collected a whole bunch of links, feel free to check out. The one everyone cites is this post by icarusancalion that sums things up nicely. Also great posts here, here, here, here and here.

A few points:

Angie also notes that the audience for this site isn't the pre-existing fanfic-reading community, but the masses of people out there who have vague fannish leanings but don't know there even is such a thing as fanfic. Or how to look for it if they do know. We are not the target audience, people: we are the suppliers of content.

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But, FanLib didn't emerge bottom-up from the fan culture itself. It wasn't run by people who knew the world of fan fiction from the inside out. It was a business, pure and simple, run by a board of directors which was entirely composed of men. This last point is especially relevant when you consider that the overwhelming percentage of people who write fan fiction are women -- even if there has been some increase of male writers as fandom has gone on line.

Also they apparently have *no clue* as to what fandom is about or how it works. None. Just look at this clause:

The Website must not be used: (1) to store, publish, distribute, or otherwise disseminate unlawful material or information including, but not limited to: threatening, harassing, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, indecent, hateful, objectionable, tortuous, libelous, deceptive, or fraudulent information and materials

Well that's like 90% of fanfic out the window straight away... Oh and they reserve the right to *edit* fic as well as publish it without giving the writer a penny! There was also - I can't find where - a report of someone suggesting to one of the creators that having summary and pairing at the top of a story would be good. He looked very surprised since this was obviously a completely new idea. (Although the fact that they are clueless might be good for us...)

Finally there's now a community life_wo_fanlib, where I found a post by one of the LJ team (*cheers*), spelling out the (very worrying) legal implications of FanLib's Terms of Service:

This means that if someone sues FanLib for one of their users publishing some illegal, defamatory, or copyright-infringing material, and the courts determine that FanLib is a co-publisher of the material, that user is obliged under the ToS to participate as a co-defendant in the suit, and pay any and all court costs and attorney's fees.

I'm not cool with that. Are you?
synecdochic

ETA: This is hilarious, although the FanLib advert yet again makes me go WTF????

ETA2: This is the face they're showing the entertainment industry! Which just... *boggles*

Oh and snippets from an open letter from a marketer watching yet another fan connected company self harm. Nearly made me cheer out loud.

ETA3: A thought... I'm not involved with the Firefly fandom, but I can imagine that the Browncoats are jumping into this fray with big grins on their faces. To edit a certain quote:

"[They believe that] they can make people fanfiction better. And we do not hold to that. [...] We aim to misbehave!"

ETA4: Also you should check out fandom_lawyers (interesting post here - read through the comments!) and metafandom. Another interesting post can be found here where a FanLib employee (jdsampson) attempts to answer questions raised by the poster (the lovely yourlibrarian). (Esp check out this thread!)

Also recommended is Fanlib: our wannabe corporate overlords.

Oh and just for the sake of completeness Jane Carnall gives a nice in-depth look at those (that?) TOS:
FanLib/Fandom: non-con, and not in a fun way.

Thanks to diachrony for the additional links!