Disney Wants Your Stuff. (No, I’m serious, they literally say you own the copyright to your fanwork until they say that THEY own it, i.e. Welcome to the new Disney TOS, Baby.

First up, the link, so chill already: https://disneytermsofuse.com/  Your relevant and terrifying passage(s) are the entirety of Section 7. Go read it. I’ll wait.

Now. First thing to understand is that the legal language within the new TOS *implies* that Disney is only referring to people who use its services, people who clicked and agreed to this new TOS. But it’s implication only. That’s not what this TOS actually says.

This TOS spends a lot of time defining fanworks, or as they call it, User Generated Content.

They want to make it clear that,

a) You totally have the right to make User Generated Content (UGC) all you want.

b) You can put that UGC anywhere you want, whether they own the site or someone else does. What matters is that you’ve put that UGC in a publically accessible place…like, oh, AO3.

c) Disney spends a few breaths saying that the creator of the UGC owns the copyright to that UGC…except if you read those words carefully, they’re not guaranteeing you anything, because THEY own the copyright.

d) Disney then says, since they own the copyright to your UGC, they can literally do anything they want with it. They can steal it, crib it, use the entire thing as their own, make money off of it, reprint it, ANYTHING–and you do not get credit. You do not get paid. You do not get acknowledgement. You might get a DMCA telling you take down your UGC because it is now *their* content that they’re selling and how dare you steal from them. (No, I’m not kidding.)

e) Nobody seems to know a fucking thing about this.

f) The bullshit on Twitter over May the Fourth was just a smokescreen, sorry. https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/28/21238909/disney-star-wars-maythe4th-hashtag-copyright-contract-twitter

Disney doesn’t want your Tweets. They just wanted to see who was paying attention, and how, and if they could get away with it. (Yes, they did go after someone who reposted Disney’s own tweets. No more information on that yet.)

g) Yes, you should absolutely take this seriously. You should be terrified, because how many fan content creators have the bank to fight this if their “copyrighted content” that Disney specifies is still *their* copyrighted content is stolen? OTW exists for this very reason, but this is fucking Disney. They. Own. Almost. Everything. In. The. Corporate. United. States. Entertainment. Industry.

h) No, your MCU, Star Wars, Pixar, Disney animated films, ANY such fanworks, are not safe. If Disney likes it, they will take it. If you say they can’t, they’ll point to their new site-wide TOS and say that they can. Is that legal? Don’t actually know, but think about who’s in the White House right now. Think about who he’d support. Yes, the Library of Congress and the House of Reps are supposed to be in charge, but how long until we could push for them to deal with/fix this shit?

i) Yes, Disney is probably trying to steal content in order to survive the pandemic, seeing as their major sources of revenue (parks and movies) aren’t happening right now.

j) Yes, I will be removing my Star Wars content. I didn’t work on that fucking story for nearly 20 years just for some corporate shill to fucking steal it.

k) Someone who currently wishes to remain anonymous has pinged an OTW peep to see if they’re aware.

l) If they weren’t so specific to point out that they really do mean Any Public Place, I wouldn’t be so concerned…but it doesn’t. This isn’t just about their services. This is about the entire fucking internet.

That’s it. You guys now know everything I know, so no, I wouldn’t be able to answer any of your questions. I suggest spreading the word, if only so someone else with more information can step up and reassure us that Disney can’t do what they believe they can do…

…but it’s fucking DISNEY. They nearly destroyed Public Domain in the United States over fucking Mickey Mouse a hundred years ago. Do you really think they’re going to say, “Oh, sorry, our bad” about this?

AO3 and Ads

nianeyna replied to your photo “IMPORTANT @flurbejurbvondurp This is so fucking stupid. Why can’t…”

Right?!

The thing that a lot of people miss is that the whole reason they want to put ads on AO3 is that AO3 is insanely successful at appealing to a certain demographic. It is AO3, not the individual fic that has done 90% of the work.

So why should AO3 allow them to profit off of that work?

More than that, why should AO3 allow them to profit when AO3 was paid for by donations from people who are paying to not see ads and whose experience on the archive is materially harmed by ads?

It’s like if you host a dinner party, and your asshole friend tries to use it as an opportunity to sell leggings or some other shitty pyramid scheme. Not only did you do all the work to make the dinner party nice, but they’re also harming their social network by turning it into a creepy business situation.

Also? A fanfic hosting website that allows you to link your patreon is a fanfic hosting website where you get 20% into a novel length fic only to discover the rest of the story is behind a paywall.

Is that the fanfic reading experience you want? A website in which a significant percentage of stories are clickbait that stop mid-cliffhanger and make you pay to see how it ends?

Ppl really don’t grasp how monetizing AO3 would fundamentally alter how the website is used and the kind of people who use it and the kind of things they write and how they write them.

Not to mention, there’ve been [ actual studies ] showing that cash incentives only improve performance in non-creative tasks – the desire for money actually inhibits creative thinking.

I say this as someone who does actually make art for money as a freelancer. I wouldn’t be able to make art for my clients for money if I didn’t also make art for myself and my community for free. If AO3 becomes just another marketplace than I want no part in it. I already spend enough time involved in art-for-profit environments.

I do not want writers to be able to monetize on A03 for the same reason I do not want my local library to become a bookstore. I like bookstores! I go to bookstores and I spend money in bookstores. I understand the value of bookstores. I also understand the value of libraries, and that a bookstore is not a satisfactory replacement for a library.

All of the volunteers who made the AO3 platform functional did so because they believed so deeply in the necessity of free fanworks that they were willing to volunteer countless hours of free coding and free tag wrangling and free web designing, etc. just to create a place where free stories can exist.

I like this analogy!

Bookstores and libraries: both great. Not the same thing.

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