International Copyright Perspectives in Fandom

[Junebug]

I've seen the topic of copyright come up occasionally, and it's curious to me just the sheer number of unresolved issues caused by legal systems having to come up with answers to the new problems posed by technological change. It's not like responding to technology changes in this way is new, but the reproducibility that comes from digital copying of media has really put a wrench in things when it comes to people's intuitions about the subject. Here's an illustrative example from my fandom life.

The Vanitas no Carte fandom on X is a rather international affair. It's composed of fans from Japan, South Korea, China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Russia, Romania, Italy, France, Germany, Spain, the UK, the USA, Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina. But in terms of fan culture, it actually splits into just two groups: the western fandom and the Japanese fandom. It's a bit of a misnomer, but what I mean to say is that there is a split between American, Spanish (and its former colonies), English, French, eastern European, and southeast Asian fans from the Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and German fans in terms of how copyright is interpreted. For the most part, aside from idiosyncrasies such as Spanish and Latino fans being the most easy-going about activities that could be called copyright infringement, what splits these two groups is whether they align with the norms of American fandom or with those of Japanese fandom.

This had relevant consequences in my own fandom life not too long ago. A rather dramatic argument blew up on X over the morality of uploading screenshots of a new artbook that came out. There had previously been grumblings about uploading screenshots of the manga when new chapters were published in Gangan Joker beforehand. To me, it quickly became apparent that there were fundamental assumptions being made about the rights of the artist and the audience behind people's anger. The thing about American fandom is that it's influenced by the state of American law, and the principle of American law that's the linchpin behind the legitimacy of fandom activities is the doctrine of Fair Use. Through Fair Use, people can take screenshots and share them, make edits of pages of the original manga, create AMVs from the anime adaption, and create fanworks. And the original author has no right to forbid any of this. The idea of fair use is particular to the legal tradition from which it originated: that of common law. But the problem here is that the only places in the world with common law are the former colonies of the British Empire. Which means everyone else in the world uses civil law. This brings us to the source of the conflict.

In civil law, fair use (or fair dealing, which is the term in Commonwealth countries) simply does not exist. Instead the author has what's known as moral rights. This means they can forbid the things that fair use would permit, such as alterations to the work or unauthorized reproductions. The existence of Japan's entire doujin and fan culture is then understood to be a privilege granted by the IP owners, who can at any time take it away if they so choose. Fans fighting over this topic was inevitable, looking it in this way. Coming from cultures with directly contradictory legal understandings of what artists can and can't demand of others, people's moral intuitions ended up being at odds. And when it comes to human beings, tolerance in matters of wrong and right does not exist. Hence the problem finally blew up.

A meta understanding of the conflict never caught on among fans, however, and things just ended with people getting tired of arguing or with simply blocking each other. Afterwards, thinking about the situation it gets even weirder. A lot of the people who argued on the basis of fair use do not live in countries that recognized fair use, so if they were ever brought to court for anything their defense wouldn't make sense. Furthermore, I don't think any country's courts or legislation has really caught up with all the scenarios created by social media. Copyrighted works get passed around to people from different countries all the time. How do you figure out jurisdiction then? I couldn't get that far with one Japanese fan, she just thought my entire view of things was crap. I kind of thought her view of things were crap too, but at least I was hoping we could figure out which set of norms applied in which cases. But that discussion wasn't possible since everyone involved was too angry.

As an aside I don't think there's an objectively right way to do copyright, just that there are different trade offs among different paths. Some of these paths will benefit the creator more and others will benefit the audience more. But when it comes to discussing copyright, I think people's irrational reasons for being for certain positions, the reasons that originate from what one is accustomed to in their society, is underdiscussed.

⚑ Moderators Note ⚑

Note posts from banned members have been delisted from this thread to refocus it! ~melon

[Melooon]

Aha, its about time we had some creative drama around here 

Whenever copyright comes up I see the same two arguments pop up over and over:

1. Copyright is bad and we should get rid of it - This is often countered as being a techbro attitude with no respect for artists as producers 

2. Copyright is good and we should respect it - This is often countered as being a corporate drone attitude with no respect for the artists as consumers 

Both arguments hinge on the idea that the ultimate value of art is the ability to exclusively create it as a means of generating income - and I just think that entire paradigm sucks! I don't wanna make art as a product. I wanna have ideas that make art, my product is not the result, its the exploration of unexplored things and how I grow.

Since this thread is focused on fan art lets keep the thread on topic - what is the cultural value of corporate products that people build fandoms around? At what point does Sonic stop being a product and start becoming part of my individual identity? Do I not own part of the idea of Sonic because that game defines part of my life? How do I separate my idea of my body from my iPhone when my iPhone is acting as an extension of me to send messages here?

There's a line in a Lana Del Rey song I posted as song of the day that's like "You name your babe Lilac Heaven After your iPhone 11" - how the hell does a person deal with life when their name is literally a fandom reference to a phone?

Simply put, these are fascinating problems and I'm not sure human society has ever had to deal with them before. Copyright law is about money on the surface, but fandom, and copyright in fandom is about human identity and the divide between the media we love and who we are. 

[Junebug]

Aha, its about time we had some creative drama around here 

Whenever copyright comes up I see the same two arguments pop up over and over:

1. Copyright is bad and we should get rid of it - This is often countered as being a techbro attitude with no respect for artists as producers 

2. Copyright is good and we should respect it - This is often countered as being a corporate drone attitude with no respect for the artists as consumers 

Both arguments hinge on the idea that the ultimate value of art is the ability to exclusively create it as a means of generating income - and I just think that entire paradigm sucks! I don't wanna make art as a product. I wanna have ideas that make art, my product is not the result, its the exploration of unexplored things and how I grow.

Since this thread is focused on fan art lets keep the thread on topic - what is the cultural value of corporate products that people build fandoms around? At what point does Sonic stop being a product and start becoming part of my individual identity? Do I not own part of the idea of Sonic because that game defines part of my life? How do I separate my idea of my body from my iPhone when my iPhone is acting as an extension of me to send messages here?

There's a line in a Lana Del Rey song I posted as song of the day that's like "You name your babe Lilac Heaven After your iPhone 11" - how the hell does a person deal with life when their name is literally a fandom reference to a phone?

Simply put, these are fascinating problems and I'm not sure human society has ever had to deal with them before. Copyright law is about money on the surface, but fandom, and copyright in fandom is about human identity and the divide between the media we love and who we are. 

There's an online webcomic/manga I read called Grey Is. It's one I've been reading for a few years now, and it also happens to have a discord server you can go on to discuss the story with other fans. The neat thing about this particular webcomic is that frequently the author of the comic interacts with fans and discusses with them their reactions to the story. One time, a pretty interesting conversation came up between myself and her.

There are two sides to her when it comes to her own story. There's the author who knows everything there is to know on a canon level, the facts of the story and also that which is not known by her, but can become solid things in the future, perhaps. She also knows what she intends to say by her story, and thinks about the different panel layouts and the timing of plot beats to say those things. There's also the discovery she goes through in creating the story, where unexpected changes to the plan occur when new ideas happen. This is the author. There's also the reader, which is what she is too. There's the her that reads the story and feels what the story is telling her. With what is shown and implied, the gaps and empty spaces are filled with her own experiences, and her own impressions. This is precisely what I do when I read a story. The result of this is somehow getting three different people relating to the story, when there's only two actual human beings.

The experience of works of art necessarily has audience participation. There is the existence of how we respond to the thing created. This isn't to say a work can mean anything. I think that belief can only come about when someone ignores the reason behind the work's existence, where it was created with a certain intention and it was very much an act of communication. I believe if a person is totally uninterested in what the author was trying to say, it's a waste. It's recyling the original work into fanfiction, and as a fanfic writer I can definitely say that this is a worse choice, because you forgo what this other person was offering you. You are left with just what you feel, instead of seeing more of the world you're in through another person's feelings.

I'm not sure why every reply so far has been ignoring the original story I wrote starting this thread, but the feelings involved is directly related to the relationship between author and audience. I don't believe copyright is saying anything more than it literally says in the law books. It's not telling anybody how to value art at all. It's just saying how that artist is going to pay rent. What should it matter to me what the ultimate value of art of anything is? I think Vanitas no Carte is worth its weight and gold, and for these thoughts and feelings to have existed I needed to have read it. This doesn't have to do with anybody else. I'm just lucky that there are other people out there who feel the same way, and see the same things in it that I do.

And the arguments that occurred on X absolutely originated from the wish to protect and respect the author they admired, the admiration being the inevitable result of the work moving them so much and seeing the source of its greatness in the person who created it. But the people involved had incompatible ideas about what constituted respect, and regardless of the real purpose of copyright, it was the difference in the law that created the cultures' views on wrong and right. This aspect can't be minimized to just about money.

[Melooon]

I'm not sure why every reply so far has been ignoring the original story

Apologies! I was thinking about your overall question about fandom and copyright; I do think the story is interesting I just didn't have much to add to it directly. Other than the idea that that I feel the issue is about identity more than money, so perhaps the cultural divide is less about the wording of laws and more about how different cultures view the ownership of their own identity.

I tend to love finding the big picture in things, so I'm less interested in the money aspect, that's a bit too detailed for me; but I love the overall issue of blurring the divide between cultural icons and people and how that relates to the mechanisms of society

[Junebug]

Apologies! I was thinking about your overall question about fandom and copyright; I do think the story is interesting I just didn't have much to add to it directly. Other than the idea that that I feel the issue is about identity more than money, so perhaps the cultural divide is less about the wording of laws and more about how different cultures view the ownership of their own identity.

I tend to love finding the big picture in things, so I'm less interested in the money aspect, that's a bit too detailed for me; but I love the overall issue of blurring the divide between cultural icons and people and how that relates to the mechanisms of society

That's fair, and I think you're on to something about personal identity being part of it. People have ideas about what respecting a creator they admire looks like. I have gotten a strong impression from the Japanese side that being considerate of other people is pretty important, so actions that appear to be motivated by indifference are treated with a lot of hostility. Which is understandable. A lot of authors are fans themselves, so they kind of get what it's like when the fandom aspect takes on its own life.

[wygolvillage]

Ideally I want copyright to be loosened or abolished, because I think the idea of an idea being "owned" is kind of absurd and goes against the way I think about art. Art influences art, it's inevitable.

Like when I imagine a copyright free world I think about public domain works like Dracula and how many adaptations and takes on Dracula there have been over time. People have still been able to make a living on art even if they don't have sole ownership of the characters, story, etc. And honestly I'd rather see a variety of transformative, interesting artwork created without fear of DMCAs and takedowns. I think that would be on the whole good for art, not bad.

[Junebug]

Ideally I want copyright to be loosened or abolished, because I think the idea of an idea being "owned" is kind of absurd and goes against the way I think about art. Art influences art, it's inevitable.

Like when I imagine a copyright free world I think about public domain works like Dracula and how many adaptations and takes on Dracula there have been over time. People have still been able to make a living on art even if they don't have sole ownership of the characters, story, etc. And honestly I'd rather see a variety of transformative, interesting artwork created without fear of DMCAs and takedowns. I think that would be on the whole good for art, not bad.

I get your perspective, since I kind of agree that ownership of ideas is inherently leaky. Information travels and people reflect each other, and influence is inevitable. Creativity is always to some degree derivative. Which is why people making arguments about questioning whether copyright accomplishes what it's meant for is reasonable to me. I'm not totally convinced yet, but I get where it's coming from. There was an interesting essay on this by Gwern Branwen some time back, arguing against the concept on the basis of information theory.

https://gwern.net/copyright

[Memory]

The thing about American fandom is that it's influenced by the state of American law, and the principle of American law that's the linchpin behind the legitimacy of fandom activities is the doctrine of Fair Use. Through Fair Use, people can take screenshots and share them, make edits of pages of the original manga, create AMVs from the anime adaption, and create fanworks.

i disagree; in my experience, usamerican fandom tends to be ignorant of or deeply misinformed on matters of copyright and the ideas and fandom norms based on usamerican copyright laws i've seen in fandom are based on misconceptions and not how laws actually are written or - more importantly - how they're applied. no offense, but you seem to be operating under one of these common misconceptions!

"fair use" doesn't inherently cover any of those things you listed unless the person making them can make a compelling argument that their use of copyrighted materal is for the purposes allowed under fair use. which one can't, usually - "criticism" and "commentary" are the closest "it's for fun fandom reasons" gets, and those are generally a stretch and people on all sides of that legal battle know it lol. AMVs get copyright struck and removed from video hosting platforms regularly and always have; sites exist to archive downloadable versions of AMVs as a result of this. searching for entries into AMV contests from us american anime conventions on youtube will never get you all of the AMVs because so many are taken down for copyright infringement.

the linchpin behind the "legitimacy" of fandom activities is, in fact, money; whether something that infringes on copyright is worth pursuing legal action over in the eyes of the copyright holder.
at the moment a lot of fandom activities are considered so minor they're not worth cracking down on or are good enough free advertising that it's beneficial to leave them alone. the majority of fandom activities are allowed because copyright holders choose to allow them, not because they aren't infringing on copyright law. this was not always the case. there have been and continue to be many very successful instances of copyright holders successfully stymieing common fandom practices like fan merch, fanfiction, fansites, archival efforts, etc, on the grounds of copyright infringement.

so:

The existence of Japan's entire doujin and fan culture is then understood to be a privilege granted by the IP owners, who can at any time take it away if they so choose. Fans fighting over this topic was inevitable, looking it in this way.

this is 100% true of usamerican fan culture as well and not specific to japan; if you were under the impression that it is different here, then you are unfortunately mistaken!

It's hard to imagine American software companies acting like Nintendo, for instance.

american companies literally created the system of copyright as it exists right now in the us. the 1998 copyright term extension act was championed by disney, time warner, universal, viacom, etc!

[Kolo]

OP, have you heard of Anne Rice before? She was an American author who wrote vampire novels and was vocally against fanfic of her work, to the point of having her lawyers demand Fanfiction.net remove her series as a category and ban all fanfic of it. Supposedly she also sent C&D letters to specific authors or fans. This was never duked out in proper court from what I remember - just threatening lawyer emails which no one challenged because legal fees are expensive - but I thought it was an interesting perspective to the idea you're talking about up there. Would her lawsuits have held up under Fair Use if pushed into court, or would the 'murky grey area' that fanworks fall have actually been forced into black & white? Food for thought!

If you're interested in perusing more:
https://fanlore.org/wiki/Anne_Rice
https://fanlore.org/wiki/Spec_Writer_Massacre

[Junebug]

Two things regarding the replies so far:

Regardless of whether you think the perspective of these fans who use fair use as a defense is the result of ignorance and delusion, this is nonetheless the defense they rely on for their fan activities. It's not me misunderstanding what people say. This is literally what they are saying in defense of the criticism they're receiving. I'm describing what other people are saying and how they are thinking about their activities. Whether that defense is determined as legitimate depends on the ruling of the courts. Do you have examples of court cases where these rulings were made? The answer is probably no, so we are both working on what we think would theoretically occur. I don't think it's actually impossible that fanworks would be recognized as legitimate by recognizing them as transformative works (there are actual court cases where transformative works were defended, so there's that), but I get the that the anarchist leanings of this forum would lead to skepticism about that. So fair enough.

Regarding Rice: well, does nobody know about her actions who is familiar with modern popular vampire fiction? Incidentally VnC is heavily influenced by the Vampire Chronicles as a fun fact.

[arcus]

When it comes to laws and fandom etiquette, region and language are major factors. With copyright law specifically, I'm going to be highly reductive and look at it from the perspective of English speaking fandom etiquette VS Japanese speaking fandom etiquette.

With your example my assumptions are:

• Japanese fans were mad that foreigners were disregarding Japanese law and social norms, and imposing their culture norms.
• The posts were public, especially in a space that the artist can see. Not a perfect comparison, but this is seen similarly to tagging an artist with an illegal upload or leak of their work.
• Since there's less of a language barrier between the countries you listed, fans empathise with the artist more and take things personally.
• It's technically reposting someone's art. Even if it's legal, it's considered disrespectful, especially from the perspective of artists.

Japan's copyright laws lacks a fair use clause, and Japanese companies are generally more aggressive over copyright, especially in the last ten years. Japanese Wikipedia is a good example of Japan's lack of fair use―it has very few images since it follows Japan law in addition to US law. Last year, a YouTuber got sentenced to two years in prison and fined, primarily over uploading a longplay of a visual novel.

As a result, there's a mild taboo over uploading screenshots of media, including TV shows and games, unless there's permission to do so. That's not to say no one commits piracy in Japan, it's more of a private affair. Manga piracy sites are especially popular. People still post screenshots and uploads let's plays of things they don't have permission for, but it's not as normalised as it is in English speaking spaces.

An example similar to yours: On Japanese Twitter, when an episode of Kamen Rider Revice had a reference to Eiga Dorobo (a series of anti movie piracy commercials involving object heads,) people posted screenshots of the reference, leading to complaints and an argument about how the screenshots uploaded count as piracy.


Mainstream English spaces are heavily influenced by US law in recent years, due to the majority of popular sites being hosted in the USA. As it has been bought up before, while fandom doesn't understand US copyright law well, people's understanding of it or lack thereof influences etiquette in English speaking spaces.

There has been more attention bought to reposting art from Japanese users since the early 2010s. However, official art for a series is seen in a different light from Japanese spaces, especially for commercial series. My assumption on that is that there's a bigger sense of detachment from an artist and their work if there's a language barrier, making it more socially acceptable to repost. As for official art reposts, I assume it's normalised since it's perceived to fall under fair use.

It's a bit of a misnomer, but what I mean to say is that there is a split between American, Spanish (and its former colonies), English, French, eastern European, and southeast Asian fans from the Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and German fans in terms of how copyright is interpreted.

I'm curious about the German part. Is copyright treated differently in German speaking spaces? Is the artist culture different?

A lot of the people who argued on the basis of fair use do not live in countries that recognized fair use, so if they were ever brought to court for anything their defense wouldn't make sense. Furthermore, I don't think any country's courts or legislation has really caught up with all the scenarios created by social media. Copyrighted works get passed around to people from different countries all the time. How do you figure out jurisdiction then?

Laws online apply to what country something is hosted in. And how threatening someone making a copyright claim is.

[Junebug]

When it comes to laws and fandom etiquette, region and language are major factors. With copyright law specifically, I'm going to be highly reductive and look at it from the perspective of English speaking fandom etiquette VS Japanese speaking fandom etiquette.

With your example my assumptions are:

• Japanese fans were mad that foreigners were disregarding Japanese law and social norms, and imposing their culture norms.
• The posts were public, especially in a space that the artist can see. Not a perfect comparison, but this is seen similarly to tagging an artist with an illegal upload or leak of their work.
• Since there's less of a language barrier between the countries you listed, fans empathise with the artist more and take things personally.
• It's technically reposting someone's art. Even if it's legal, it's considered disrespectful, especially from the perspective of artists.

Japan's copyright laws lacks a fair use clause, and Japanese companies are generally more aggressive over copyright, especially in the last ten years. Japanese Wikipedia is a good example of Japan's lack of fair use―it has very few images since it follows Japan law in addition to US law. Last year, a YouTuber got sentenced to two years in prison and fined, primarily over uploading a longplay of a visual novel.

As a result, there's a mild taboo over uploading screenshots of media, including TV shows and games, unless there's permission to do so. That's not to say no one commits piracy in Japan, it's more of a private affair. Manga piracy sites are especially popular. People still post screenshots and uploads let's plays of things they don't have permission for, but it's not as normalised as it is in English speaking spaces.

An example similar to yours: On Japanese Twitter, when an episode of Kamen Rider Revice had a reference to Eiga Dorobo (a series of anti movie piracy commercials involving object heads,) people posted screenshots of the reference, leading to complaints and an argument about how the screenshots uploaded count as piracy.


Mainstream English spaces are heavily influenced by US law in recent years, due to the majority of popular sites being hosted in the USA. As it has been bought up before, while fandom doesn't understand US copyright law well, people's understanding of it or lack thereof influences etiquette in English speaking spaces.

There has been more attention bought to reposting art from Japanese users since the early 2010s. However, official art for a series is seen in a different light from Japanese spaces, especially for commercial series. My assumption on that is that there's a bigger sense of detachment from an artist and their work if there's a language barrier, making it more socially acceptable to repost. As for official art reposts, I assume it's normalised since it's perceived to fall under fair use.


I'm curious about the German part. Is copyright treated differently in German speaking spaces? Is the artist culture different?

Laws online apply to what country something is hosted in. And how threatening someone making a copyright claim is.

I think you've summarized the situation quite accurately, which might say something about the ubiquity of this conflict among online fandoms. What complicates things further is that the fans on X had developed certain expectations of what was acceptable and what was not, but then the author showed up. It was like what was once a fandom community with its own norms was changed to suit the purposes of the IP owners. I also agree the source of so much of the US influence on how fans interpret fan activities is probably a byproduct of the popularity of US sites, which is a kind of curious element in all of this. It's almost just an accident of history that the western fandom became this way, when entirely different norms could have taken root had the internet been different.

About the German part: I'm not totally sure. One could say it was a coincidence that the German fans were regularly aligned with the eastern perspective at that time, but I don't honestly believe that. It did come off to me like there was a particular artist culture that was very opposed to unauthorized reproduction of works. I kind of just rounded it off to being another country with a civil law system to explain the similar values, but that doesn't explain how people from countries with similar legal traditions had a more tolerant approach to reposting and reuploading. From my time in Europe I was left with the impression that German people frequently become familiar with English, so they'd fit the criteria of another group influenced by US fandom culture. It's just not the case in practice. In conclusion: I'm not totally sure!

Edit: I wanted to add a quick note. I'm not sure if people are aware that the Organization for Transformative Works does legal work specifically to defend fandom activities with fair use as its defense. So if US fans are misunderstanding their own copyright laws, blame the people who actually file amicus curiae briefs for it. If this is a misunderstanding, it's a pretty elaborate one if it gets to the point of getting lawyers involved.

https://www.transformativeworks.org/our-projects/legal/