A participatory culture formed around specific fandoms,
where members distribute creations related to copyrighted material, tends to
raise legal issues sooner or later. Amid an era where the Web 2.0 technologies
discussed by Michael Zimmer (2013) mean a breakdown of barriers or looser
standards as to what gets published on-line, the corporate ownership of a
franchise like My Little Pony: Friendship
is Magic had the potential to limit what works fans could share on-line.
In her lecture on Ethical
Issues and the Information Seeker, Debbie Hansen (2014) touched on the need
to respect authorial rights additionally enforced by the US Copyright Law—though
she focused on that issue within a library setting, where the concept of “fair
use” allowed information processionals to duplicate or share texts without
obtaining the copyright owner’s permission. But this takes on interesting implications
in terms of what can circulate on-line, including when people use the
intellectual property established by a company as a template for fan creations.
When My Little Pony:
Friendship is Magic premiered, most soon-to-be fans didn’t discover or
watch the first few episodes on the Hub Network or its website. Instead,
individuals who had learned about MLP: FIM
and wanted to share the show recorded and posted the clips of, and full
episodes onto on-line channels like Youtube.com or Hulu.com. They submitted
links that led to these postings on public forums, sent them in emails to
friends, etc.
In fact, this was how my brother and I watched the first
season. A dear friend of ours sent an email urging us to watch this incredible
series he had discovered. And by the time we’d watched ten episodes, almost
back-to-back, we had to admit our enjoyment of it.
Youtube.com has often taken down shows distributed in this
way, citing the infringement of its policies (often on behalf of the copyright
owner).
Yet what made a big difference, and probably helped the MLP
fan base to continue expanding, was the fact that Hasbro chose not to take down the episode postings.
In fact, they encouraged the practice—even though they couldn’t have foreseen
the massive outpouring of fans from various backgrounds and age groups for the
show. If Hasbro had chosen to restrict the ability for people to watch MLP: FIM at that time to a narrower
selection of conduits, such as the Hub Website or paid video mediums, a fan
base would still have flourished but perhaps at a slower pace. Or, users might
have sought to subvert the restrictions by other means to share content.
This is by no means an argument that copyright holders
should admit to a lack of control over their creations or allow people to post
protected content that violates the law. As argued by Hansen, the need to
respect authorial ownership within the bounds of fair use is an ethical
practice endorsed in a library, and this is just as true elsewhere.
In the case of the MLP:
FIM fan base, Hasbro did grant
that permission by letting fans circulate materials related to their show and
distribute new creations. They never really came out and endorsed it publicly—although
due to a mixture of the creators’ interactions with fans in that Web 2.0
environment and what this meant for the show’s ratings or earnings, the move
actually served as a type of sly marketing tactic.
The articles covered in last week’s, and this week’s lecture
stress how legal matters and ethics can complicate how information
professionals deal with issues like the distribution of content or materials.
They touch on the need for intellectual freedom, and some of the restrictions
or bands various sources have tried to place on the accessibility of different
texts—while making the fine distinction on the right for users to receive information (Dresang, 2006).
But given Hasbro’s reaction, and how the fan base and their
creations thrive on-line, it seems the type of mutual consent to share
intellectual property with MLP: FIM exemplifies
how copyright holders and users might increasingly come to interact on the Internet.
References:
·
Debbie, H. (2014). Ethical Issues and the
Information Seeker. Retrieved from: https://sjsu.instructure.com/courses/1117618/files/34242003/download?verifier=mc7nxBK5jp5knHCLvI1zuFdxYErpAHtYTuiFi8Gi&wrap=1
·
Dresang, E. (2006). Intellectual freedom and libraries:
Complexity and change in the twenty-first-century digital environment. Library
Quarterly, 76(2), 169-192. http://libaccess.sjlibrary.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=llf&AN=22509856&site=ehost-live (Links to an external site.)
·
Zimmer, M. (2013). Assessing the treatment of patron
privacy in Library 2.0 literature. Information Technology & Libraries,
32(2). http://ejournals.bc.edu/ojs/index.php/ital/article/view/3420 (Links to an external site.)
