Final Paper - research proposal
The relationship between fans and companies
Copyrights and fan appropriation through the years


Introduction

The purpose of this paper is to form an introduction to an extensive research on the subject of fan culture. The emphasis of that research will be on the way the appropriating of the cultural material of television shows and movies in fan fiction and fan art relates to the way companies try to restrain this. The main question of this study would be:

What is the relationship between fan appropriation and the companies that the own the copyrights to the used material?

In order to answer this question, I will look at the following aspects of this relationship:

What is the importance/meaning of appropriating for fans?

What is the importance for the company?

Are these elements mutually exclusive?

What are the fans’ online rights and are fans aware of these rights?

How do companies usually react to the fans’ appropriation?

Is this reaction changing, for better or for worse?

In this paper I will create a framework that can be used to answer at the abovementioned questions. What are the current developments in the media industry and how do fans react to this? Why do they react to these developments in such a way, what is the importance of the appropriating of cultural material? What has been the reaction of the media industry and what are the effects of this reaction? Who is speaking on behalf of the fans?

Current developments

New media vs. centralisation

Before I start my overview of the relationship between fans that appropriate raw material offered to them by the media industry and the companies that own the copyrighted material, I will give an outline of the current developments in the industry, because these are often the cause of the disagreement between companies and fans.

One of the most important cultural developments of the last decade is the spreading of technologies that enable decentralisation and democratisation by enabling individuals to become users, rather than consumers. For years, television and movie audiences have been seen as passive consumers. This view changed over the years, theorists realised that audience were not passive; they were active in the sense that they were interpreting the signals sent to them, sometimes even rejecting the dominant messages. But still, people were never able to actively change the material that was offered to them, at least not on a large scale. Technologies like the Internet changed this. The public no longer has to wait for companies to offer them service, they can become the producer themselves, with a reach and efficacy not possible since the rise of mass media.[1] The Internet is end-to-end communication the individuals, not the companies, control it. It enables new modes of distribution, at the same time lowering the barriers to distribution. And due to lower entry barriers, the net widens the range of possible contributors.[2]

In this new media environment, mainstream culture plays an important role in providing material for interaction and reworking by fans.[3] Fan sites that offer fan fiction and fan art are plenty. However, the structure that underlies the current media systems is one of a small number of professional, commercial producers seeking to serve the widest possible of audiences. They always had an unusual degree of control over who gets to say what in the public arena. The reworking of their copyrighted materials does not please them and companies often file lawsuits against websites that use their products, though these fans do not mean to harm the original. Fan art and fiction are a form of expressing oneself.[4] This number of companies controlling the media landscape is getting smaller still and their interests are at odds with those of the fans.[5]

So we see that there are two contradictory trends: on the one hand the enabling of participatory culture through low barrier technologies, mainly the Internet, and on the other hand the centralisation of power in the traditional media conglomerates. As the distinction between producer and consumer diminishes, my question is, what are the interests of both sides, how do they depend on each other and in what way can these two sides cooperate? I will outline some of the aspects of this contradiction in the following chapters.

The User End

Power

The last couple of decades, a number of technologies have been developed that enable the user to influence media. Previously, networks of distribution were tightly controlled by traditional media powers. These new technologies, like VCRs, digital cameras and computers, have lowered the barrier entry of the media marketplace. The new form of interacting with media that arose from these developments is called participatory culture, because audiences can now actively change and redistribute the content offered to them. Fans embraced these technologies and one of the demands they make is the right to appropriate already existing material, to change the raw material that is offered on T.V. or in the movies according to their own taste and view. Though aspects of this culture, like fan fiction and fan art, were already present before the advent of the Internet, never was it possible to distribute and exchange your work as easily, widely and fast as can be done now. Media consumers wanted to and can now become media producers.[6]

As mentioned before, the structure that underlies the current media industry is one of a small number of professional producers serving the biggest possible group of people. This means that the content of their products will have to appeal to this wide range of audiences. Therefore, subjects that are a bit sensitive, like homosexuality, are often not treated in popular shows. There is an alternative, the Internet. All the end points are users that can play the role of producer and consumer.[7] Because of the great diversity of the people online, the products they deliver will also be of a very diverse nature. The Internet serves the most diverse groups of users, the combinations of backgrounds is limitless. Due to lower entry barriers, the net widens the range of possible contributors and it also encourages innovation, because there is no control and it is so inexpensive.[8]

The ability of producing and distributing their own cultural content is a great incentive to a lot of fans to share their enjoyment of media products with likeminded people. Sites that feature fan fiction, stories involving television show of movie’s characters and settings, and fan art flourish on the web. Communities and forums are very popular. Anyone with a computer, some software and an Internet connection can contribute to these sites and this enables the users to go against the grain and offer alternatives to the original material they draw from. As writer or artist you have great power over the raw material: characters that were not very important in the original can be elaborated on; relations that were not possible in the original can be formed. Plot developments are no longer limited to what the developers of the show are allowed to portray. Though powerless to change the original -the altered content will not be shown on television- these fans don’t have to keep their disapproval of certain aspects of a show or movie silent; they can put it online instead. Powerless perhaps isn’t the right word, because the fans have enough power to make the industry they derive their materials from very uncomfortable. I will elaborate on the response of media conglomerates later.

Identity

Fan culture is also a very important way of sharing your cultural and personal identity with others. Often, fans get asked why they don’t produce original material instead of drawing from already existing products. The stories we’ve been telling each other, now and centuries ago, have always been derived from our cultural experiences. Therefore, it is logical that we use the material offered in the media, because be live in a heavily mediated environment. These images will also be more powerful, because they are recognized by a large number of people, often worldwide, depending on the source material.[9] Sharing the fiction and art with others and discussing it on message boards and forums is a way of coming together and showing your appreciation for a show or movie. It shows your preferences. Just like an author of a book will often put much of himself into his book, so will the writers of fan fiction. On the surface, their speculations may seem to be simply an interpretation of the material, but speculations involve fans’ fantasies and desires as well and therefore also are a way of expressing identity.[10]

More involvement / saturation

The fans that start sites with fan fiction or art do not want to damage the original material, they just want to fully enjoy the subjects, the characters that are offered to them. They let their work serve as an inspiration for their own production and social interaction and use the reworking as a way of showing appreciation.[11] Sometimes the works may be critical of the original, but more often it serves to highlight aspects that were not features in the original, like back-story, secondary characters or hidden relationships.[12] Some fans go very far in adding new options to a series or movie, for example slash fan art: homoerotic depictions of already existing characters.

What these fans and companies don’t agree on is therefore that the show or movie as it is aired is a finished product and that is should be ‘protected’ from any further use. The companies fear that letting others use their copyrighted materials will lead to a diminishment of value. The speed and range of the Internet, now the most popular source for fan art rather than fanzines, scares them, because it cannot be fully monitored. Efforts are made to monitor fans’ sites, but some will always remain unseen. The fans only want to get more involved with the material and add elements for their own and others’ enjoyment. Their appropriation of the material will mostly benefit the producers. I will elaborate on this aspect of fan culture later.

Research

In the final research I want to look at the aspects of fan culture, identity, power and involvement more comprehensively and also find out what the fans themselves have to say about these subjects. This could be done indirectly by looking at the fan sites and their forums, but also by sending the regular visitors and the owners of the site e-mails.

The Company

Keeping control

Keeping control of intellectual property is of great interest to media companies. These old media have an interest in undermining the new, computers and the Internet, because the new threatens the old. The original architecture of cyberspace, decentralised end-to-end communication, has changed slightly and the ability to monitor behaviour in cyberspace has increased.[13] New technologies enable companies to ‘ferret out’ infringements and find out what the exact origins of a certain image are.[14] The current trend in the development of media corporations also shows the need to keep control over as many uses of a certain copyright as possible: horizontal integration and the concentration of media ownership into the hands of a smaller and smaller number of media conglomerates. Horizontal in the sense that companies like Warner Bros now have interests in film as well as newspapers and magazines, cable and television.[15] These companies also want to keep control over the copyrights as long as possible, to make sure no other company can get their hands on it before as much profit as possible is made out of it.[16]

In this world intellectual property, the characters and stories created by artists have huge economic value and the media conglomerates seek to tightly control its usage in order to maximize profits and minimize the risk of devaluing of their large amounts of trademarks and copyrights.[17] Any infringement of these copyrights, even if it is in the form of the appropriation of characters on relatively small fan sites, poses a real threat and is aggressively reacted to. Examples of big companies like Warner Bros or LucasFilm taking legal action against fans that used copyrighted materials are no exceptions. A copyright owner can stop someone else from copying, distributing, performing, or displaying the characters without the permission of the owner. The owner also can stop someone from creating "derivative works". Fan fiction and fan art are derivative works, because they use the characters of the original work.[18] The owners of mass media companies therefore have an unusual degree of control over who gets to say what, because they own these copyrights and because they have the means to scare fans into shutting down their sites by sending them ‘cease and desist’ letters. Individuals will often answer to this, because they wouldn’t dare to take on such a huge opponent without legal and financial back-up.

Of course, fans have always used characters in their appropriation of cultural materials, but the Internet poses a new sort of threat. Before the digital revolution, people could only share their dedication to a certain series or movie by coming together or communicating through letters. The digital environment enables communication with a reach, speed and efficacy not possible before. The Internet has no centre to control who gets to say something. The low cost of producing and communicating means that the barrier to entry to becoming a speaker in the mass mediated environment is very low.[19] The chance that someone gets to read the fiction or gets to see the art created by a fan has been greatly increased by the Internet, and therefore is much more threatening to the owners of the copyrights than before. Companies have reacted to this by extra and more aggressive regulation. This regulation comes in the form of ‘cease and desist’ letters that result in the disappearing pf the site that featured the copyrighted material, more on this in the next chapter. The Internet makes it easier to find the fan works, because a lot of artists now publish online and their works can therefore be easily traced with search engines. As mentioned above, not all fansites will be spotted this way, but it is easier to find a website containing pictures of certain characters than it is to intercept correspondences using the old-fashioned mailing system.

Effects

The effects of this concentration of power are very harmful. It limits the production and circulation of more cultural materials and it addresses the public as consumers instead of users, a development that goes against the very nature of the Internet. The current structures of ownership in mass media diminish our ability to participate in the creation and interpretation of our own culture.[20] It also makes culture less diverse. The Internet, because of the low entry barriers and accessibility, enables users of very different backgrounds to contribute. The many-to-many distribution ensures that people have much greater access to innovative or even revolutionary interpretations than ever before. By forbidding them to appropriate the raw material offered to them in movies or television shows, companies diminish the Internet’s ability to produce a wide range of texts.

When looking at the effects at an economical level, it is striking that forbidding fans to participate is more likely to harm a company than it would be to let them participate. By attacking fans, the relationship between the consumers and the corporations is damaged.[21] Fans often publish their ‘cease and desist’ letters, which results in negative publicity.[22] Corporations refuse to allow fans to appropriate the material they offer however, because of the aforementioned fear of losing control over their copyrights and the profits attached to it as well as their image, in the case of less ‘decent’ forms of fan fiction. It would be much better to see fans as producers of additional value. A good example of this is the way Amazon allows users to value the products instead of advertisers and marketers.[23]

Participation

Involving users creates far more positive associations for a company. The question remains whether companies other than Amazon would be willing to cooperate with users and how far they will allow them to go. Allowing users to comment on a book or movie still is a long way from allowing people to appropriate original T.V. or movie material. However, allowing fans to treat film or television as a way of telling their own stories could increase the commercial value of media products by opening them to new audiences.[24] It also builds brand loyalty and it is a way for companies to monitor the needs of their public. Fan fiction and art often feature characters, relations or settings that originate from the original material but didn’t get enough attention. Companies could please their audiences by implementing these elements into the shows or movies. Sometimes, fans even lobby to keep a certain show on the air. They don’t want to profit from their appropriations, they just want to add value. A good example of this is the computer game The Sims, by Will Wright of Maxis. It allows players to make their own skins, objects et cetera that can be easily implemented into the original game. There are numerous websites offering players new skins, ranging from celebrities to all sorts of fashionable outfits. Wright, who expects two thirds of the game’s content to originate from the players’ minds, applauds this development.[25]

Companies can also use their fans as a marketing tool.  Often described as 'permission-based marketing,' some sites form alliances with large corporations to gain legal access to original material that will be posted on that site. An example of this would be theonering.net, a Lord of the Rings fan site. For the site owners, this means a regular audience, because users will regularly return to this site in order to get the latest and most reliable news. For the company, it is a great way to reach their target audience and to make people enthusiastic. But, the fan sites that only feature fan art and fan fiction that is not acknowledged by the copyrighted company, can also make someone curious about the original material.

What is so striking in all this is that the industry is sending fans contradictory messages on how to relate to the original material. Because of the concentration of power in large horizontally integrated companies, fans are encouraged to buy into media content in the form of t-shirts and games in order to deepen the involvement.[26] Movies are increasingly seen as ‘franchises’, involving a longer exploitation of a certain product, for example Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter. These movies, both based on books, encourage people to buy tie-in products like toys. Their long-lasting nature, the releasing of approximately one movie a year, also ensures enduring audience interest. The goal of such strategies is to create a strong and long-lasting bond between the public and the media content. Also, media producers can monitor and participate in the online discussions in order to find out what their fans want.[27] Fans will react to this by also appropriating the material for their own ideas, but that is not allowed. [28]

So, companies promote strong involvement, investment and media convergence, then turn around and forbid the fans to really invest in the material by adapting it to their own views and sharing this with other fans. Again, it would be much more profitable if companies would reward the users for their interest and the work that is put into the fan fiction and art. Instead, these people get punished for their effort in the form of cease and desist letters. It is rumoured that companies sometimes even shut down their fans’ unofficial sites only to replace them with their own fake fan sites.[29] This way their material can still be promoted, whilst keeping sure that it doesn’t fall into the ‘wrong’ hands and that their copyrights don’t get infringed.

Research

There are signs however, that some companies start to see the importance of the dedication of their fans. For my research it would be interesting to look at this development from a historical perspective: how did companies react to fan appropriation over the last couple of decades? What, if there are, caused the changes in this reaction? My hypothesis is that the digital revolution caused the media industry to panic, fiercely copyrighting and suing infringers, but that this reaction will prove to be changing as companies have come to realise the importance of fan dedication. I want to find out what companies are doing to show their fans they appreciate their hard work. In order to find this out, I could look at a number of sites of media corporations and search for elements that encourage fans to contribute to the original. On a lot of sites people are encouraged to interact with the owner, mostly in the form of games, quizzes, communities et cetera.  But are companies also encouraging fresh input by, for example, urging fans to come up with original story lines? Are they diminishing the distance between themselves and their fans by allowing them to be more than mere visitors? How far do companies allow their fans to go? Do the official sites collaborate with fan sites, for example with permission-based marketing? What is the future of the way companies speak to their fans?