Remember FanLib and their connections with RIAA?

Remember FanLib and their connections with Hilary Rosen and RIAA?

I was having trouble understanding who RIAA was and why those connections were problematic, though I followed that under FanLib's associate, Hilary Rosen, RIAA was all about scraping money for the suits at the expense of the artists. With a little more digging (thank you rez_lo) I learned she helped criminalize fair use even where no copyright had been violated.

Most of us know that fanfiction relies upon fair use as our legal cornerstone. Undermining fair use is bad for fanfiction writers. Really bad. I've put Rosen on my dartboard as an enemy of fanfiction.

But now I have a clear picture. RIAA is a bunch of assholes who threaten dirt-poor college students with lawsuits for illegally downloading music. Or! Those lucky kids can settle for between $3,000 - $5,000.

Apparently, RIAA has leaned on universities (I imagine by telling them if you don't help us, we'll sue you instead) to send letters on their behalf. At least one university stopped short of giving RIAA students' addresses outright at any rate, though their lawyers are running scared.

( University students get a threatening letter via the nice folks at RIAA. )

Now that I have this pretty snapshot of RIAA -- what on earth is FanLib doing mixed up with these guys?


(I've turned off comments because I have to focus on writing right now.)

The fanarchive, wow, we need you.

I didn't post this weeks ago when I was buried under comments and RL, but the more I read about FanLib and ff.net, the more enthusiastic I become about fanarchive.

We need a new doorway. While I've never been against ff.net and I've often sent new writers there to test their wings unobserved in a giant fanfiction warehouse, I think we definitely need a new doorway to fanfiction, one that's run by fanfiction writers. So here's the announcement I neglected to post before:

(This announcement is being forwarded from the fanarchive community on LJ.)

A group of fanfic fans is forming to set up a nonprofit organization for collective fannish projects, including building a central fanfic archive. We are setting up shop in the fanarchive community on livejournal, located here:

http://community.livejournal.com/fanarchive/

A couple of big updates have been posted today (Monday June 4), including the basic outline of our organization structure and our call for volunteers. If this sounds like something you would be interested in, please stop by, give us your thoughts, and sign up for announcements!

Here are the two posts:

The Organizational Structure
http://community.livejournal.com/fanarchive/5634.html

Willingness to Serve
http://community.livejournal.com/fanarchive/5913.html

If you don't have an LJ account, you can subscribe by email with this handy free service:

http://www.rssfwd.com/

All you need to do is paste in the following URL:

http://community.livejournal.com/fanarchive/rss

(If you use an RSS newsreader, you can use that same URL to subscribe to the news feed.)

You also do not need an LJ account to make comments on posts -- please just remember to put your name/pseud somewhere in your comment, so everyone knows who is talking, and include your email address so others can reply to you directly if you want.

If you would like to catch up on the last week or two of discussion, a helpful summary post is up here:

http://community.livejournal.com/fanarchive/5406.html

Thank you!

-- astolat (otherwise known as shalott)

Come on in, the water's warm.

FIC: Unexpected section of Out Of Bounds - this one G-rated, unless you visualize R's language

Hi guys, here's an unexpected bit of Out Of Bounds, set much earlier in the story, from Rodney's childhood. It's going to slide in before John and Rodney go to the Schmidt Center, actually.

This story is proving the truism of its name. It is beyond my control. Hah.

( Rodney was short for seventh grade, with wavy hair that fell past his ears, slim and smaller than the other kids... )

( Then this is the part that you already know. )

No music for this one. :)