lyore | Why FFN isn't like FanLib: Profit, Risk and Exploitation

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Why FFN isn't like FanLib: Profit, Risk and Exploitation

I was reading my way through

metafandom, and I came across a couple of people honestly enquiring how what FanLib was doing was any different to FFN, giving that both are funded by advertisements. I wrote up a nice, long comment, and then LJ ate it and crashed Safari. So I've lost not only the comment, but who I was replying to in the first place.

But, since writing it out helped me to get my thoughts in order, I thought I might revisit it here.

The difference that fans are reacting to is, in my mind, the matter of a) intent, and b) appearance, and c) risk.

FanLib is openly seeking to make money from fanfic. It's up front about this, and even if they hadn't been, the site/company is funded by venture capital money, provided in expectation of a return on the investment. FanLib, effectively, has to make a profit, and it is a profit that is completely dependent on the exploitation of other people's IP.

On the other hand, despite FanLib's claims to the contrary, FFN has never promoted itself as being a 'for profit' archive, and denies that its advertising revenue going to anything other than funding the site's services (a believable claim IMO, given the size of the site). But frankly, whether or not it's actually making a profit is almost irrelevant - the party line, the publicly available data (at least the easily accessible stuff), all maintains this stance. FFN has the appearance of being a not-for-profit, fan-run site. And therein lies the difference.

Fans have long believed that that one thing that protects them from the ire of IP owners is the fact that this is a labour of love, with no one profiting from the work. Again, whether or not this is legally true or not is undecided, but I personally think it does make a large difference on whether or not IP owners decide to pursue it. After all, putting myself in the shoes of some hypothetical author, for instance - while I may be exceedingly flattered that fans cared enough to write fanfic of my work, I'd be pretty damn annoyed at the idea of other people profiting from it, especially a random third party who has no allegiance to my work. It's human nature. I'd be a lot more likely to throw around the C&Ds, and far more inclined to take it further, if I was chasing a company (and a non-fannish company) rather than a fan.

And it's complicated by the fact that the rights to the IP might not (in fact, probably don't) belong to a person, but to a company - and given this whole mess has happened because Big Business saw a chance to make a buck, do you think the owners of the original IP will feel any differently? FanLib is, in one sense, exploiting a market that could be theirs. Why on earth would one of the big media companies put up with it?

And this is the reason that I see FanLib as different to FFN. It's business and operating model increases the risk to fans, not only by making it more public, but by making fandom a more attractive target. When you combine this with the fact that the very TOS that FanLib feels will protect them may in fact make them more vulnerable, (see

synecdochic's post on the 'safe habour' concept), making the fans more vulnerable to attack from FanLib as well as the original IP owner, this could be bad news.

In RL, I work in projectland, and FanLib violates one of the most basic rules - the risk follows the money. If you want to convince people to take on all the risk of a situation, you need to make sure they are compensated accordingly. In this case, fandom takes all the risk, and FanLib takes all the profit. While I can see why this is an attractive proposal for them, it doesn't fill me with wild enthusiasm.

This doesn't even address the other issues of how FanLib and FFN are different - first and foremost, FFN is largely without the air of exploitation that FanLib exudes. Whether you believe this is gender based, or a simple case of Big Business vs Grassroots, the very act of having 'outsiders' come in and try and make a profit off a community's freely provided content is exploitative, and was always going to raise hackles, even if they hadn't violated almost every rule of (LJ) fandom etiquette there is.

I'm not a big fan of FFN, but I think to equate the two is to miss some very fundamental issues that get to the heart of the whole FanLib debate.

ETA Relevant Blog post by profic author here " I’m willing to look the other way for fans, who are just enjoying themselves and not bothering to try to do anything other than have fun. I’m less inclined to look the other way when someone is trying to build a business a) off my fans without compensating them; b) off of my universe and characters without compensating me."

Yeah, what he said.

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Easily understood and rational essay.
Good points.
Laurie

Thanks :)

Ah, nice essay and I very much agree with all your points. :D

Hadn't heard of FanLib before this, but if they are trying to make money off of fanfic, that's probably one of the biggest no-nos in all of fandom.

Here's an article (with links to a couple of excellent journal entries) explaining the situation pretty clearly:

http://www.henryjenkins.org/2007/05/transforming_fan_culture_into.html

I'm still catching up on the brou-ha-ha myself.

icarusancalion has a good summary here: http://icarusancalion.livejournal.com/626928.html#cutid1

In fact, I think it might be the one Prof. Jenkins quotes in his.

Happy Reading! There's a lot to get through. But essentially - FanLib is a VC backed company who's business strategy is to make money through hosting fanfic, and only fanfic, on their site. Fandom has reacted accordingly.

Another interesting point in FL's TOS is that by agreeing to it, you would be swearing that you have the rights to the IP you submit. That sure sounds like FL is protecting themselves by making the fanficcers even more liable than usual. You might overlook neighborhood kids sneaking in and playing in your backyard, but when they put up signs saying it's THEIR yard, you're likely to be quite annoyed.

Really? Yuck. I must have missed that. But then, that's one of the reason's I didn't go into that side of things much - I'm not a lawyer, and other people have explored that side of things much better than I can.

The only reason I was even aware of the 'safe habour' concept before this was a scandal at a local university.

But yes, if people started claiming ownership of my IP, then 'quite annoyed' would be putting it mildly.

I very much agree. If Fanlib were, in good faith, aiming to be a straight-up social networking site through the medium of fanfic, then I might say they were similar in shape, at least, to ff.net. But ff.net has never, ever directed the efforts of fans into unpaid labor for TPTB and only given back a byline and a gift certificate--which is Fanlib's history in a nutshell. I will trust that ff.net operates in good faith, format strangulation and flamewars and all. I will never believe it of Fanlib.

But ff.net has never, ever directed the efforts of fans into unpaid labor for TPTB

If you mean TPTB in the form of the website owners/company, than I agree.

I will trust that ff.net operates in good faith, format strangulation and flamewars and all. I will never believe it of Fanlib.

Yes. There are numerous reasons why I'm not a big fan of FFN, but I do 'trust' them, in this sense - at least a lot more than I'd ever trust FanLib.

Thanks for the rational essay. I agree with your points and think you said it better than I could have.

Thanks :)

Well said.

Thank you :)

I don't frequent FFN and so I don't know much about them, but I think another huge difference between FanLib and FFN is that FFN is not yelling at all the world Here we are, here there is fanfic, come look at us!

FanLib might talk about FFN being the third most stickiest website on the internet (whatever that's supposed to mean), but in fact I doubt that many people who are not interested in or already know about fanfic would just stumble over FFN by chance. FanLib with it's press releases and ad campaigns is much harder to miss.

Yes, that's true. OTOH, the sheer size and popularity of FFN means that it almost don't have to shout, it draws attention of the mainstream by it's existence. I think it's probably the easiest to find, although you probably do have to be looking for some sort of fan-related matter to find it.

I don't disagree with you, just playing devil's advocate :)

Nice, clean argument. Very well put. *adds to links*

Did you notice that Fanlib didn't just violate lj-etiquette? The first kerfluffle I saw (in terms of timing) was on the lotr site. A Fanlib employee basically went in and treated that tight-knit community like it was ffnet, and then had the gall to be surprised when they reacted poorly. "No one minding the store" was the expectation David Williams put forth in one of his responses. That didn't go over too well, obviously.

FFN is also entirely opt-in, voluntary, and unsolicited. Fanlib tried to cherry-pick in private areas, using (essentially) spam accounts, with no sense of how hard people had to work to become the kind of writers who get hundreds of comments on a story, nor of their loyalty to the communities that celebrate them. I think they really did perceive us as mostly teenagers with a handful of twenty-somethings who were as gods to us or something silly like that.

Ok, stopping now. Argh. I can't believe how much these people turn my rant on. *facepalm*

Did you notice that Fanlib didn't just violate lj-etiquette?

Yes, you're right, and I did see that. I was trying to avoid generalising about LJ fandom being representative of fandom as a whole, but I guess I got too specific and missed bits. Will fix, when I get a chance.

And I agree with your second comment as well - the cherry-picking was never going to go down well.

Overall, FanLib's attitude towards established fandom has been patronising and insulting - is it any wonder there is a backlash?

Believe me, I had a lot of trouble keeping (most of) my rant out of the OP.

Let's bear in mind, too, that Xing, the owner of ff.net, designed it as a college student.

Then he funded it out of his pockets as the thing grew and grew, struggling financially to keep up with staggering bandwidth costs. He finally put in those ads to offset the expense. It was that or the archive going down.

Yes, I thought that was the case, but I couldn't, with a cursory search, find anything to back up my recollection, so I left it out.

Personally, I can't believe he funded that thing out of his own pocket for as long as he did. Say what you like about FFN (and I will *g*), but that's dedication that should not be forgotten.

I have a not for profit site "funded" by banner ads. The site gets about 500,000 visitors a year. Total ad income: $4,000 annually. If FF.net says they aren't making money, I believe them.

Nice to get some figures to back up my gut instinct - I've never even run a website, let along tried to fund a significantly sized one. $4000 off 500,000 visitors? Wow.

At that rate, FanLib would need about 375 million visitors to recoup just the initial investment...

Fanfiction.net gets 500,000 pageviews (not visits) in a *day* per Google Adwords, which is a pretty accurate count. That's some serious bandwidth usage, particularly since many of the pages are reasonably large files.

-- It has an Alexa rating higher than msnbc.com, which is a slightly less accurate measure of anything relevant but says, basically, BIG site.

I'm not familiar with Alexa ratings (my knowledge of website-type things is effectively nil, never having run one), but 500,000 pageviews per day? Wow. Although, given the popularity of the site, I guess I can believe that.

Thanks for the extra info.

Excellent points, all of them, and I'm glad you pointed these things out. I don't really deal with FF.Net anymore, and I have numerous issues with it, but nothing compares to the sheer wrong contained within FanLib.

FFN may be one of my least favourite places in fandom (though I will read fics over there if they are rec'd to me), but even it doesn't deserve to be compared to FanLib.

To me, the biggest and most salient difference is that ff.net isn't going to take your stuff and sell it, with no royalties to you. No matter how frustrating it's been to deal with ff.net sometimes, that to me is the line in the sand.

Hi :)

Yes, them profiting at all from our work is an issue for me as well. Which means I can see it being an even bigger issue for the people who actually own the characters/situations we write about.

I have been one of these people, so thanks for your essay :)

No worries. Like I said, it was a good chance for me to clarify my thoughts on the issue.

I have to ask - did I convince you? And I don't mind if I didn't, I'm just curious since most of the comments have been from people who, from their comments elsewhere, were probably predisposed to agree.

sure, you did point out all the differences as you see them, very clearly, and when I was posting my question (somewhere, I don't remember, I am just skimming all through the metafandom linked entries) I did not really think through it myself.

partly why I didn't invest much thoughts, was because, honestly, for myself, I don't see a need for a multifandom archive. I am a monofannish person, but even if I were not, I think, I would prefer separate archives for my fandoms.

but reading so far, it seems, fanlib from the beginning was destined to doom, they made so many mistakes, its just seems to be a joke, not just in the aim of making money of the work of artists in fandom, but like everything.
how could they send those invitation letters to fandom authors, if it did seem like were not anything like their target audience, or werent we?!?!

I tend to be very multi-fandom, but I'm also very used to going to different archives/communities/mailing lists for each fandom. Really, it's no more effort (as a reader) for me to change sections at, say, FFN, than it is for me to change to a different website. OTOH, I can see why it would be more convenient for writers.

And yes - so far, FanLib has been an excellent lesson in how not to approach fandom.

Here via metafandom. Very clearly argued - made me stop to think about all these issues you lay out so carefully. And I have to disagree on whether FFN being a labor of love protects it. Because Chris Williams sure sounds like FanLib is *his* labor of love, and he says he's a fan. Anyone can claim to be a fan.

So the intent (fan love) would count less than the result. (1) Are they making money? (2) How much are they making? And (3) is it practical to go after them? Fans that are not making much (FFN) and are numerous and dispersed (fan-run archives) are not only not worth going after, but impossible to hunt down - and where do you stop? It's a Napster nightmare.

The author you quote at the end shows the problem of these multiple considerations. The author would let most of it slide. But their publisher or lawyer? Would make the decision on a pragmatic basis, not a moral one. IF profit AND easy to nail, THEN sue their ass.

FanLib sure seems to be setting up to meet those condition, regardless of saying their writers would be liable.

A bigger problem is that while you make your case, I think, that FFN is *not* at all like FanLib, would those differences matter at that point? Would the lawyers, etc., point to FFN, etc., as the "gateway drugs"?

I don't know how FFN management and other archive hosts are viewing this, but if I were them, I'd be worrying bigtime about FanLib spoiling the game for us all.

Sorry, I was unclear. This is why I should not write meta-ish posts in the middle of the night.

I intended the emphasis to be on the second half of that sentence 'labour of love, with no one profiting from the work' - that it is the lack of profit that protects fans, not the fact they are doing out of love.

Intent, as I intended it, would be the intent to profit. As FFN was initially set up without ads, it is easier to accept that the intent behind the site was not to profit, and therefore for both fans and IP owners to accept at face value that the site does not make a profit. Whereas FanLib, being backed by venture capital, requires profit to justify its existence.

You're right in terms of practicality, as well. Instead of having to go after individual (and very likely broke) fans, FanLib itself provides a juicy target for potential litigation. And since we all know from our analysis of the TOS *grin*, any damage to FanLib will be passed on to the fans.

A bigger problem is that while you make your case, I think, that FFN is *not* at all like FanLib, would those differences matter at that point?

This was one issue I did not address in this post, since I wanted to keep the focus on the immediate differences between the two models (and, to be honest, I was trying not to sound like the 'Chicken Little' some of the pro-FanLib fans have accused us of being).

Again, I think we are in agreement. If we got to the stage where lawsuits are being thrown around, I don't think the differences between FFN and FanLib would be sufficient to protect fans - the genie would be out of the bottle, so to speak, and everyone would be fair game. However, I do think that the FFN model is less likely to provoke such a situation.

So while I can't speak to the thoughts of the hosts of other fansites, I personally am worried about the potential for FanLib to 'spoil the game' for the rest of fandom, even those who were smart enough to stay well away.

And thanks for your comment - it's great to get such well-reasoned responses!

You summed up all my worry about FanLib. While I haven't got the most loving opinion of FFN, none of my annoyance has to do with whether or not I could get sued. And FFN lets me block its own ads.

Yes, exactly. And I have their ad-blocker page bookmarked :)

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Why FFN isn't like FanLib: Profit, Risk and Exploitation

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Hi, here from metafandom

Re: Hi, here from metafandom

people honestly enquiring how what FanLib was doing was any different to FFN

Re: people honestly enquiring how what FanLib was doing was any different to FFN

I have to ask - did I convince you?

Re: I have to ask - did I convince you?

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