* Our top story: Mercedes Lackey’s pep talk for writers doing NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, encourages them to try their hand at fan fiction. While Lackey mistakenly believes that publishing fanfiction is plagiarism (whatever your thoughts about the legality of publishing fanfiction, “plagiarism” isn’t right word), she also notes that a project that starts out fanfiction (like her own forthcoming Secret World Chronicles) can evolve into “a real, marketable project.” She also says that “you would be surprised at how many professionals started out that way (and still do it!)” While that may be generally true, here at the OTW we’re not so terribly surprised.
* Techdirt has an article discussing the ways in which copyright law gets in the way of fan art. Among their good points: that trademark holders don’t have to block all uses of the mark or risk losing it, and that more copyright holders should consider issuing free licenses to people who want to use their stuff.
* Mikhail Koulikov of the Online Bibliography of Anime and Manga Research is going to work with the OTW’s Vidding team to help us create an online bibliography for anime music videos, but fans interested in anime and manga more generally might want to poke around this fantastic fannish resource.
* Henry Jenkins’s blog is hosting a series of guest posts from the curators of the various parts of the 2010 DIY 24/7 video show. The first one, Activist Media (curated by Sasha Constanza-Chock) is up now, in three parts.
* Lastly, the Archive of Our Own got a really nice shout out from the librarians, archivists, and crowdsourcing specialists at the Emerging Technologies Summer Institute: watch their run-through of the Archive’s features below!
We want your suggestions! If you know of an essay, video, article, event, or link you think we should know about you can submit it in three easy ways: comment on the most recent Link Roundup on LJ, IJ or DW, tag a link with “for:otw_news” on Delicious or give @OTW_News a shoutout on Twitter. Links are welcome in all languages!