I Aim to Misbehave

[alixtii]

You know what what? In some ways, I think I miss the days when everyone in fandom thought fanfic was illegal. (I say this is as someone who entered fandom in 2004, so I'm not sure if there has exactly been a sea-change, but it sure feels like it to me.) Because now everyone's on about what we can do to look like fine upstanding citizens, and at least when we thought we were criminals we were more genuinely subversive. When we thought we were all committing copyright infringement, other things which may have been illegal but ethical, like providing porn to teenagers, didn't seem like such a big deal. But now the "fanfic is legal" zeitgesit is taking over, and everyone's calling for us to clean up our acts, and I have to wonder what exactly we're losing out on.

The specific post that got me to post this is this one, "Looking Ahead as Fen," but it's nothing new and mirrors conversations I've been seeing going on all through the FanLib and Strikethrough07 discussions.

I don't like disclaimers (and for the most part don't use them), don't like warnings (and only warn for rape), don't like ratings (I've switched to just using "Work Safe" and "NWS," and am thinking about a "Maybe Work Safe" option). I refuse to flock a post just because it contains adult content (even if that content is incest or cross-gen). I've ranted about most of these issues (often in metafandom-linked posts) before, and the idea that we have to start doing these things (making our art and literature fit into cookie-cutter boxes) to make ourselves acceptable to the Man just sort of makes me retch.

Let's be bad guys?

Comments

[ithiliana.livejournal.com]

deleted and reposted--again my apologies!

(Although now that I reread your comment--when was RPF considered "illegal" if FPF wasn't? I mean different laws -- copyright vs. slander/libel, but I've always heard in the U.S. at least the RPS writers would be at less risk because "public figures" don't have a lot of control over what's written about them?)

[inalasahl]

Bad phrasing on my part. I didn't mean that anyone considered RPF illegal, just that there used to be a widespread belief that it was wrong, even in fandom, even among fanfic writers.

However, I'm going to comment anyway on the libel thing. I'm not an expert or a lawyer, just someone with a brief journalistic background, so standard disclaimer, but it's an oversimplification that public figures (I think the phrase is actually those "in the public eye") don't have a lot of control over what's written about them. In a libel suit, it's certainly true the burden of proof is on the person claiming to have been libeled. Private citizens pretty much need only prove a statement was false and that no attempt was made to assess the statement's veracity to prove libel. The burden of proof is greater for public citizens, but not insurmountable. They must additionally prove that the statement was knowingly false (the libeler knew for sure it wasn't true, not just failed to check) and harmful (almost certainly monetarily, not just "emotional trauma," for example, someone who cannot get a job because all prospective employers read on Famous Blog A that s/he is a cocaine addict). Public figures who wanted to bring libel suits for RPF would find it very easy to prove stories were knowingly false, but they'd have a lot harder time proving they'd been damaged (the writer doesn't really think X and his co-star have sprouted wings and are having nightly sex, and no one else does either).