Hmm… I’m not sure about this, at least in this specific context. To me such a dichotomy depends on the idea that feminism and other socially progressive movements can’t be commercialised, which isn’t the case. Feminism has become a central part of Buffy’s brand over the years, and while an abortion storyline might not make Joss as much money as some other hypothetical venture, it’s a controversial issue that makes sense with the public perception of what the franchise is about, perfectly placed to hook a waning readership back into the series and its supposed USP.

That’s not to say that I think the commercialisation means that a valuable conversation is impossible. At the same time, given how the issue of whether Buffy consented or was able to consent to the sex that made her pregnant has so far been completely ignored, I find it difficult not to think that Whedon has carefully selected which Issue he wants to focus on, rather than approaching his work with an uncompromising feminist perspective. Further to that, the implication that Buffy is choosing to terminate her pregnancy because of her lacking finances, rather than a lack of desire to become a mother, seems to me to shift the conversation from one about sexual equality to one about the ethics of single motherhood (cf. the rather thinly-veiled metaphor about Nikki Wood, the mother who was physically(?) unable to stop working for her son, who ended up dead and resented).

As a feminist, I think it’s good to have this conversation in the mainstream media, in the broad strokes that it’s being painted, but as a fan I think it’s always important to work out what conversation the text is really allowing us to have.

To me, this entire area is about compromise. As a writer, I don’t want people stealing my stuff and I want to get paid. As a fan writer, I want to be able to keep enjoying fan fiction. There has to be room for both, and I think there actually is!

And copyright was invented to expire for a reason! Your point about Vergil and Homer is well taken.

But this whole thing about the digital era and technology changing everything — wow. Remember the Sony Betamax case? Remember how the musicians unions and the radio stations hated the idea of recorded music at first? Technology is always such a challenge to the law.

I thought danah boyd had a great post about all this last week.

Thanks for the post.

I saw a post on Tumblr the other day about how many fan artists drastically undercharge compared to pro rates for prints, commissions, etc, which I mention by way of wondering whether fan art is closer to a hybrid economy than anything else right now. On the other hand, I can’t think of a way that a fan artform like vids could ever be part of a hybrid economy short of a total revolution in intellectual property laws.

Mm, I think you’re right here, though I think it’s important to recognize that part of what makes fic fic is the ways that the things it does–queer relationships, kink and porn, to name just two things that are much harder to find in commercial publishing–are shaped by current market and societal paradigms. So if the mainstream changes, which I think it is, I’d expect fic to change too.

People somehow are freer to not compare their own work to all the professional, polished stuff they see on tv or in museums or hear on the radio.

They can make their own art their own way; the fun not necessarily in the “objective quality” of it, but in the process, in the participation, in the, as you point out, the love.

Thanks and good luck!

A few comments:

>> on the whole, there’s a tacit understanding that the fans who buy and sell dojinshi are the industry’s biggest supporters and should be left alone.

Publishers scout for new talent at Comike, and some established mangaka publish their own (often sought-after) dōjinshi.

>> Comiket itself doesn’t host panels as far as I can tell, but its organizers seem to take part in panels held during other manga- or entertainment industry-related events quite often and report on those in publications like the catalog.

There is also the Comike Fringe group held (in Japanese) during Comike. The meeting I went to was very informative, with presentations by researchers, scholars, and critics.

>>I’ll try to find out how they count people.

At PCA in April 2011, in presenting preliminary data from a survey held in August 2010 by a team from The University of Tokyo and Tokyo Institute of Technology, the presenter, Nakamura Jin, that visits were “total combined attendance over 3 days”. So if I were to attend each of the three days, that would count as three visits. See also this report from Mainichi Shimbun on Anime News Network: http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2011-08-14/attendance-dropped-by-20000-at-comic-market-80

>> Japanese copyright law forbids the sale of unauthorized derivative works, and most scholars and fans agree that what takes place at Comiket is probably illegal.
>> The policy that is actually applied is quite different in some (not all, of course) areas.
Mikhail quoting Mehra:
>> “Japanese copyright infringement damage awards are so low that it pays to infringe.”

This may also speak to different ideas about laws and the rights deriving therefrom. Historically copyright was not a concern in Japan at all; that changed only in the Meiji period with the adoption of Enlightenment-derived legal and other systems. I wonder if this pre-modern attitude toward ownership carried over into the modern era.

BTW a cool resource on site is the International Desk. They’ve been amazingly helpful to me.

Gomen nasai (sorry!) for only now starting to read this blog. Hope to see some of you at Comike.

(I would dearly love to be a fly on the wall during a conversation between representatives of the Japanese and the US content industries.)