On Waxy, Andy Baio made a post called “No Copyright Intended”, in which he pointed out the confusion surrounding copyright in YouTube videos. Literally hundreds of thousands of videos have some kind of copyright disclaimer, saying that “no copyright infringement is intended.” On YouTube's support forums, there's rampant confusion over what copyright is. People genuinely confused that their videos were blocked even with a disclosure, confused that audio was removed even though there was no "intentional copyright infringement." Some ask for the best wording of a disclaimer, not knowing that virtually all video is blocked...

On FutureBook, Steve Richards (managing director of social media agency Yomego) has a brief piece looking at the rising popularity of online worlds (such as Pottermore and Scholastic’s Horrible Histories World) as ways to market books to kids. He offers a number of suggestions for how the runners of those virtual worlds can make them more attractive and user-friendly to their target audience. Online environments don’t signal the death of reading – far from it. They can actively promote books to children, and pique their interest in new characters and stories. But just as a child...

A couple of weeks ago, Time Magazine’s Lev Grossman looked at fan fiction: the history of fanfic, the fanfic community, what drives fans to write or read it, and authors’ attitudes toward it. Unlike a lot of fanfic pieces, it takes the time to explore the subject in detail—even if the focus is not necessarily the best. The article is a bit overblown in places (I will admit, I cringed at its contention, “Fan fiction is what literature might look like if it were reinvented from scratch after a nuclear apocalypse by a band of brilliant pop-culture junkies trapped...

Hello again, everyone. June was a long and annoying month, during which I was unable to type for several weeks. Fortunately, after surgery to put a plate and screw in, I have the use of my left hand again, and I can appreciate the ability to type like I never could before. (Sweet, sweet WPM.) For my first post of July, I am going to take a look at a fan-phenomenon that has been sweeping the Internet over the last few months, and suggest some lessons that e-book publishers ought to take from it, and some ways that those...

The Hollywood Reporter updates a story I mentioned a couple of months ago, regarding the lawsuit filed by a historical novel author whose book featured Tolkien as a character. When Stephen Hilliard received a cease-and-desist order from the Tolkien estate, he filed a preliminary suit himself seeking a declaration that he had a first-amendment right to publish Mirkwood. Now, Hilliard and the Tolkien estate have reached a settlement that will allow the continued publication of the novel. Under the terms of the settlement, Hilliard is changing the cover to involve a modified reference to Tolkien and a disclaimer stating...

Here are a couple of updates to the Tolkien story I did a couple of days ago: First, Cory Doctorow heard from the Tolkien estate’s lawyer that the Tolkien estate was actually not involved in Zazzle’s takedown of the “While you were reading Tolkien, I was watching Evangelion” button—Zazzle did it all on its own. According to [lawyer Steven] Maier, "Zazzle has confirmed that it took down the link of its own accord, because its content management department came across the product and deemed it to be potentially infringing." The weird thing...

In reference to my post a few days ago about free on-line writing possibly devaluing paid prose, an interesting post came my way from Mary Hamilton at her Metamedia blog in which she talks about unpaid work versus paid from a standpoint of social relationships. Hamilton cites a chapter from a book called Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, on the effect of market forces on social relationships. The chapter talks about an experiment studying how hard students would work on mindless tasks if paid nothing, fifty cents, or five dollars for their work. It turns...

I’ve been letting news about the Tolkien estate’s chilling effect on creative efforts involving Tolkien’s name or works pile up without reporting on it because most of it doesn’t seem to relate directly to e-books, but enough of it has accreted that it has reached critical mass, so I’m going to touch on all of it at once. After all, it wouldn’t feel right not to give it at least a Tolkien effort. In Soviet Russia, rings lord you! – I caught a note on Galleycat a couple of weeks ago that a fan has translated a...

On Publishing Perspectives Daniel Kalder talks with Scott Walker, president of Brain Candy LLC and one of the people behind the Creative Commons shared-universe project Runes of Gallidon. Walker believes that there is a gap between creators of commercial media, and the fans who enjoy the commercial media enough to create their own derivative works based on it and distribute them for free. He thinks the gap can be bridged, with financial benefits for all. In Walker’s proposed “transmedia” projects like Runes of Gallidon, there are gatekeepers on the world to make sure that any prospective new additions fit...

Chris Walters has posted an interesting and provocative post over at Booksprung in which he investigates ways that publishing fanfic could be made “legal”. In particular, he envisions a two-step process in which the body of a derivative work is published with placeholders instead of character names. For instance, a Harry Potter fanfic could have every reference to Harry’s name replaced with BOYWIZARD, every reference to Hogwart’s replaced with MAGICSCHOOL, and so on, until there are no actual derivative names within the story. Then when the story is purchased, a program on the buyer’s computer goes through and uses...

I’m about a week and a half behind the curve on this, but I’ve just noticed that John Scalzi and Wil Wheaton are putting on a fanfic contest. Write a 400-to-2000-word story based on a rather…remarkable painting featuring Scalzi and Wheaton by the end of the month, and you could win 10-cents-a-word payment for and publication of the story, plus a collection of books from Subterranean Press. Winning stories will be sold in chapbook form to benefit the Lupus Alliance of America. The entry deadline is 11:59 p.m. Eastern, June 30th 2010, with one entry allowed per...

Update, 5/10: One of the commenters points out that, since I originally posted this, Diana Gabaldon deleted first all comments on her two blog posts on fanfic, then the posts themselves. I suppose she was unprepared to handle the level of controversy she inadvertently generated. Perhaps fanfic fans can feel at least partially vindicated that Ms. Gabaldon realized she'd made an error (though it would have been better if she had posted something more on the order of an apology for her intemperate words), but it's also sad that the posts vanish from the historical record. (Though I suppose they may...