Reflection Blog #5: The Freedom to Distribute Ponies

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.)