Category: News of Note

Every month in OTW Signal we’ll take a look at stories that connect to the OTW’s mission and projects, including legal, technology, academic, fannish history, and preservation issues that are important for fandom, fan culture or transformative works.

Recently the podcast Pod on the Suit interviewed Open Doors staffer Acts of Tekla about the project’s work. The discussion covered both the digital imports of archives to AO3 and physical material preservation, as well as various details of the OTW’s workings, from how the Translation Committee operates to what you need to look for if you’re thinking about orphaning your works on AO3. Open Doors’ ability to preserve as well as its limitations were explained to listeners, as well as some of the inside details of working on the project.

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Every month in OTW Signal we’ll take a look at stories that connect to the OTW’s mission and projects, including legal, technology, academic, fannish history, and preservation issues that are important for fandom, fan culture or transformative works.

Fans of animanga works, especially those producing doujinshi, have reason to cheer the outcome of a Japanese court case in October. The case turned on whether a derivative creation, in this case a doujin magazine, would be protected by copyright. The plaintiff had produced some Yuri!!! On Ice, Tiger & Bunny, and Mr. Osomatsu fanart. Someone else then reproduced that fanart for profit. The fan creator then sued claiming copyright infringement and demanded compensation. In the first trial, the court ruled that “there is not enough evidence to recognize that it is an illegal secondary work” and ruled in favor of the fan creator.

The case was then appealed to Japan’s Intellectual Property High Court. They upheld the lower court ruling. In short, the decision was that “since the cartoon character itself is ‘not a work’, even if the original character is made to appear in the doujin magazine, it does not constitute copyright infringement by itself.”

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Every month in OTW Signal we’ll take a look at stories that connect to the OTW’s mission and projects, including legal, technology, academic, fannish history, and preservation issues that are important for fandom, fan culture or transformative works.

For some readers, the name Geocities may ring no bells, but for other fans, it was their main fannish platform in the early days of the web. Last month an article reminded readers of what has been lost. “Along with Tripod, GeoCities became a huge step in the democratization of the Internet, allowing anyone with an Internet connection to easily publish info on the web.”

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