Can we get real, here?
Aug. 8th, 2007 04:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jlhIn the wake of all the LJ/6A stuff I've seen a bunch of posts reminding fen that mundanes will always think they're weird no matter what they do, and that no really, fanfic is illegal, so we need to be careful about what we are asking for. It's not that I take issue with either of these things, exactly; it's the implication that they only apply to fandoms. (I'm not going to touch, here, the ongoing irony that RPS/RPF is probably in a more legal space than FPF/FPS, because seriously, whatever.)
First, the kind of copyright issues that could threaten fanfic are already, right now, threatening fantasy sports leagues. The sports leagues have always been more harsh on protecting their copyright to the games and trying as hard as they can to extend that copyright to everything they can think of, be it the statistics of the players (the basis of Major League Baseball's lawsuit) or the locker room press conferences (see more about the NFL controlling sports reporters' access). The NCAA booted one reporter out of their press box for liveblogging the game, which they felt was an infringement of their copyright. Now that the sports leagues have started cable channels and websites, they are competing with the sports channels that once featured them, which lead to the MLB's ridiculous decision (since rescinded) to drop pay cable access to out-of-town games in favor of a deal they did with DirecTV.
I could go into a long digression here about the major sports leagues and why they're wrong-headed not just about this treatment of their super-fans but so many other things, but it is important to note that they are only going after the websites that are making money off fantasy sports, and not the fans themselves. Still: copyright fights, not just for nutty media or SF/F fans anymore!
Porn, well, that's where my own life experience sort of breaks down. I live in the northeast, I grew up in a very small town in the northeast, and there's porn around. Porn has permeated our media culture. I've been writing the stuff for the last 25 years, almost, and my non-fandom friends were more surprised that I was writing fanfiction than that I was writing porn. Larry Flynt is a giant in the law mostly because he couldn't be bothered to worry what people think of him. Hugh Hefner's girlfriends have a show on E! Really, no, really, it's not the porn in and of itself. There's a lot of talk about HP, and a lot of confusion about it, but that's a distraction.
Mostly, it's two things: One, those mundanes often don't really have hobbies, and don't value anything that you might spend your time on that won't ultimately make you money. Those crazy scrapbookers! Those crazy quilters! Why are you spending time looking for that last baseball card to make your collection of the 1967 Mets--not even the team that won, but some other team--complete? Why are you still playing music when your band hasn't made it onto MTV and you can't quit your day job? We like to think, in this fannish persecution mode that we adopted in high school (when everyone was a freak, remember?) that some kinds of fannishness is put down and other kinds are okay, but that's not actually true. Casual fannishness of anything is okay. Passionate fannishness of anything, isn't.
And yet, marketers target those passionate folks, want to reach them when they're doing their quilting or whatever, not only to sell them quilting needles, but to sponsor their mini-marathons or many other things. Look at Warner Brothers' involvement in some of the Pottercons. Comic Con has become an industry event such that even E!News was down there this year, and they weren't making fun of the cos players. Care "too much" about anything, and you leave yourself open to both ridicule and marketing.
Two, there's a hysteria at the moment about online predators, which reminds me of the 90s hysteria about kidnappers. Even the infamous "50,000" statistic has reared its ugly head. But as you can see here, the vast majority of missing children are kidnapped by noncustodial parents, run away, or have been kicked out of their house. These children are still in danger--there's usually a very good reason that parent is noncustodial, and we all know what can happen to kids living out on the streets--but they have not been taken by strangers. Similarly, most sexual abuse to children occurs with people they didn't consider strangers, like a family member, a teacher, a coach, a family friend. Believe me, these kids are traumatized, not just because of what happened but because a sacred trust has been violated. But they were not abused by someone trolling for them on the internet.
So why the scare stories in the media? Why the shock groups going after livejournal or myspace? Well, first, news reports the unusual, not what happens every day. If abuse happens within a family, it's considered a private matter and won't hit the papers. Second, it's just a better bogeyman. We'd all love to take our fear of children being hurt and put it off on a monster rather than recognizing that the monster is more often someone we know, someone we might have trusted to take care of our children. By the way, there's an excellent guide for safety programs for kids put together by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, from which I gathered many of my statistics.
The kidnapping fear passed, eventually, Amber Alert laws notwithstanding. The sexual abuse of children fear will also hopefully move to where it should be, not about strangers, but about friends, with an emphasis on creating an environment for children and teens to be able to disclose abuse that has occurred and give them the resources to say no, to not give into the pressure to go along with the adult. Kicking people off myspace and watching NBC entrap folks online, however, isn't going to keep many kids safer.
First, the kind of copyright issues that could threaten fanfic are already, right now, threatening fantasy sports leagues. The sports leagues have always been more harsh on protecting their copyright to the games and trying as hard as they can to extend that copyright to everything they can think of, be it the statistics of the players (the basis of Major League Baseball's lawsuit) or the locker room press conferences (see more about the NFL controlling sports reporters' access). The NCAA booted one reporter out of their press box for liveblogging the game, which they felt was an infringement of their copyright. Now that the sports leagues have started cable channels and websites, they are competing with the sports channels that once featured them, which lead to the MLB's ridiculous decision (since rescinded) to drop pay cable access to out-of-town games in favor of a deal they did with DirecTV.
I could go into a long digression here about the major sports leagues and why they're wrong-headed not just about this treatment of their super-fans but so many other things, but it is important to note that they are only going after the websites that are making money off fantasy sports, and not the fans themselves. Still: copyright fights, not just for nutty media or SF/F fans anymore!
Porn, well, that's where my own life experience sort of breaks down. I live in the northeast, I grew up in a very small town in the northeast, and there's porn around. Porn has permeated our media culture. I've been writing the stuff for the last 25 years, almost, and my non-fandom friends were more surprised that I was writing fanfiction than that I was writing porn. Larry Flynt is a giant in the law mostly because he couldn't be bothered to worry what people think of him. Hugh Hefner's girlfriends have a show on E! Really, no, really, it's not the porn in and of itself. There's a lot of talk about HP, and a lot of confusion about it, but that's a distraction.
Mostly, it's two things: One, those mundanes often don't really have hobbies, and don't value anything that you might spend your time on that won't ultimately make you money. Those crazy scrapbookers! Those crazy quilters! Why are you spending time looking for that last baseball card to make your collection of the 1967 Mets--not even the team that won, but some other team--complete? Why are you still playing music when your band hasn't made it onto MTV and you can't quit your day job? We like to think, in this fannish persecution mode that we adopted in high school (when everyone was a freak, remember?) that some kinds of fannishness is put down and other kinds are okay, but that's not actually true. Casual fannishness of anything is okay. Passionate fannishness of anything, isn't.
And yet, marketers target those passionate folks, want to reach them when they're doing their quilting or whatever, not only to sell them quilting needles, but to sponsor their mini-marathons or many other things. Look at Warner Brothers' involvement in some of the Pottercons. Comic Con has become an industry event such that even E!News was down there this year, and they weren't making fun of the cos players. Care "too much" about anything, and you leave yourself open to both ridicule and marketing.
Two, there's a hysteria at the moment about online predators, which reminds me of the 90s hysteria about kidnappers. Even the infamous "50,000" statistic has reared its ugly head. But as you can see here, the vast majority of missing children are kidnapped by noncustodial parents, run away, or have been kicked out of their house. These children are still in danger--there's usually a very good reason that parent is noncustodial, and we all know what can happen to kids living out on the streets--but they have not been taken by strangers. Similarly, most sexual abuse to children occurs with people they didn't consider strangers, like a family member, a teacher, a coach, a family friend. Believe me, these kids are traumatized, not just because of what happened but because a sacred trust has been violated. But they were not abused by someone trolling for them on the internet.
So why the scare stories in the media? Why the shock groups going after livejournal or myspace? Well, first, news reports the unusual, not what happens every day. If abuse happens within a family, it's considered a private matter and won't hit the papers. Second, it's just a better bogeyman. We'd all love to take our fear of children being hurt and put it off on a monster rather than recognizing that the monster is more often someone we know, someone we might have trusted to take care of our children. By the way, there's an excellent guide for safety programs for kids put together by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, from which I gathered many of my statistics.
The kidnapping fear passed, eventually, Amber Alert laws notwithstanding. The sexual abuse of children fear will also hopefully move to where it should be, not about strangers, but about friends, with an emphasis on creating an environment for children and teens to be able to disclose abuse that has occurred and give them the resources to say no, to not give into the pressure to go along with the adult. Kicking people off myspace and watching NBC entrap folks online, however, isn't going to keep many kids safer.
