Introduction
Having worked in digital media for television since 1999, I have taken a keen interest in watching how the perception of digital technology as a threat to traditional media, particularly by large media conglomerates, has evolved. The reactions of the film and recording industries to so-called “piracy” have received the most attention, but there has also been a backlash against sharing technologies and practices within the broadcast television industry as well. Networks have spoken out against fans posting even short clips of copyrighted content on fan sites and YouTube, and have been active in forcing takedowns of such clips and even, at times, of the sites themselves.
The proposed topic of research is the effect these efforts have had on the fans’ relationship to the brand and its franchises. How, exactly, do these networks think these types of activities will affect their revenues, and have those fears been borne out? Is the fan’s affinity with the brand or franchise adversely affected by persecution by the network? How is the fan community at large affected by the networks’ activities, and what effect does that, in turn, have on the brand? What are some potential solutions that would satisfy both the brands and the networks?
Definitions of Fans and Fan Activities
In order for us to examine the question of whether or not corporate media’s persecution of fan activities has been helpful or harmful to the media properties, we must first define what exactly we mean by fans, and what we mean by “fan activities.” In a research study by C. Lee Harrington and Denise D. Bielby, and documented in their article “Global Fandom/Global Fan Studies,” participants were asked to define the difference between fans and ordinary consumers. The results were that most participants agreed that fans are a subset of consumers, but ones that have a greater “emotional, psychological, and/or behavioral investment in media texts,” (186) and whose level of active engagement with a text is substantially greater than average consumers, who are generally passive in their consumption. This jibes with Henry Jenkins’ definition of fans from the introduction of his book, Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture, in which he describes fans as “active, critically engaged, and creative.” (1) Jenkins goes on to say that digital technology is allowing fan cultures to thrive and grow, by providing people who may have, in the past, only been passive consumers, the opportunity to “archive, annotate, appropriate, and recirculate media content.” (1) By this definition, even the simple act of “recirculating,” – posting a video clip of a TV program onto YouTube or a blog – constitutes fan behavior. Taking clues from these two definitions, we can safely define fans as anyone who has an affective relationship with a media text beyond passive consumption, and ‘fan activity’ as the active engagement with that media text such as sending it to a friend or sharing a segment of it online. However, there are a number of fan activities that have gone beyond these simple acts of engagement, one of which is fan fiction, which I will discuss in a moment, in which fans create entire alternative narratives based on the objects of their fandom.
Negative reactions and backlash: Mashups and Fan Fiction
To understand how network reaction to fan activity might affect the fan’s relationship to a show, it’s important to examine the myriad of fan activities that have been subject to scrutiny – and sometimes attack – by copyright owners in the past. Unfortunately, there has been very little research or documentation of negative fan reactions to television brands or shows after being served with a lawsuit or takedown notice due to copyright infringement. There has, however, been research on negative fan reactions in the area of music fandom, but these backlashes seem to have been directed more against the record companies – which are not usually the objects of fandom – than against the artists themselves. In “Confessions of an Intellectual (Property): Danger Mouse, Mickey Mouse, Sonny Bono, and My Long and Winding Path as a Copyright Activist – Academic”, Kembrew McLeod describes a fan backlash against EMI when the label sent cease-and-desist letters to websites offering downloads of The Grey Album, a mashup by DJ Danger Mouse of The Beatles’ White Album and Jay-Z’s The Black Album. He explains that, although the label was adamant in defending its copyright on The Beatles’ record, artists themselves are often complicit in this type of fan activity. He claims “Jay-Z tacitly allowed [the mashup] to happen by releasing a cappella versions of the record. There’s no way any Beatles fan would choose to download the Danger Mouse remix in lieu of purchasing a Beatles record, and the same is true of Jay-Z’s fan base.” (80) He goes on to explore the phenomenon of mashups as a fan activity, stating that it allows fans to “participate in – to make and remake – the pop culture that surrounds them.” (86)
Another form of fan activity that has been with us since long before the digital revolution is fan fiction. In “Complimentary Creation: Protecting Fan Fiction as Fair Use,” Rachel Stroud defines fan fiction as a way for fans to express their passion for a film or TV show by creating alternate texts which expand on the original characters and plotlines and creating these narratives in the genres of “fantasy, comedy, drama, adventure and mystery,” regardless of the genre of the original text. She outlines two general categories of fan faction, the first being referential works – those that take the form of “non-fiction reference guides to fiction works.” The second category is participatory works, which “borrow the characters and settings of the original” and reframe them into new narratives and situations.
While enforcement of copyright-infringing fan fiction may not necessarily cause fans to react negatively to the texts which are the objects of their fandom, in “Copyright Protection and Internet Fan Sites: Entertainment Industry Finds Solace in Traditional Copyright Law,” Lauren Yamamoto describes the “tension” that exists between copyright holders (i.e. publishers, networks and studios) and fans, a tension that exists even though the studios and networks “do not want to alienate consumers by aggressively enforcing their copyright interests.” (98) However, she explains that they do so out of fear that their exclusive rights will become “diluted and eventually lead to the end of that legal protection.” (99) This emphasizes the point that, while fan activities may not undermine ratings or sales, they do threaten the ability for the copyright holder to maintain control of their rights. Fans, on the other hand, see themselves as being entitled to these activities since they are allowing the original texts to exist by virtue of their support, and even argue that their use of copyrighted materials helps the copyright holder by helping to publicize the original text. (99) This leads us to the question of whether the persecution of fans might be counterproductive to the popularity of the brand, and whether their activities may in fact help it to survive.
Fan activities: do they hinder or help the brand?
The idea that fans’ appropriation and use of copyrighted material helps rather than hinders the media brands is posited by Alexis Lothian in “Living in a Den of Thieves: Fan Video and Digital Challenges to Ownership.” Lothian asserts that the fact that “media producers have explicitly sought to solicit fan participation as labor for their profits in the form of user-generated content that helps build their brand” (135) is evidence that fan activity is a boon to media producers rather than a bane. Lothian further contends that fan activity not only makes fans complicit with the capitalist system in which the original text is rooted, but that, in fact, they are even more complicit than the average consumer, as “fandom also demands to be provided with the capitalist new on which to build.” (135)
In “Should Fan Fiction Be Free?” Abigail De Kosnik further contributes to this idea by contending that commercialization of fan fiction by studios and networks offers an implicit statement that unsanctioned fan activities have helped the brand by advertising the original text. In her article, De Kosnik seems to concur with Lothian that creators of fan fiction may be unwittingly playing into the capitalist system by creating free advertising for the brands. She says, “only the corporate owners of the media properties that fic authors so creatively elaborate on will see economic gain from these writers’ volunteer work.” (124) De Kosnik also offers evidence to uphold Yamamoto’s belief that the suppression of fan activity is less about material damages to the entertainment property and more about maintaining control of the brand. To support this idea, she calls into evidence the fact that Disney purchased the fan fiction site FanLib in the summer of 2008 (119). At the time the article was written, this purchase was still in the rumor stages, but further research confirms that Disney did, in fact, make the purchase, but the site was shut down and Disney, instead, put the sites assets to work for their own brand.
In an article in PC Magazine online, Chloe Albanesius reports that the battle between media giants Viacom and Google over the posting of copyrighted videos by fans onto Google’s YouTube site, may not be over damages inflicted by fan activity or of maintaining control of the brand. Instead, she says, there is indication that this litigation might be based in retaliation. According to the article, Viacom tried to buy YouTube in 2006, and it was only after they failed in this endeavor that they pursued legal action against the ultimate acquirer of the site, Google. In the depositions that have been submitted since the lawsuit began, it’s been maintained by Google that Viacom originally allowed its content to remain on YouTube because they thought that having video posted by fans actually helped the ratings of the shows. The takedown notices, according to Google, were Viacom’s attempt to drive down traffic on YouTube to hurt the site, even though they were potentially damaging their own ratings in the process.
Competing with Free: The Effects of File Sharing
Since there has been very little research on the effects of copyright-infringing fan activities on television ratings, we must again look to other entertainment industries to see what the effects of file sharing by fans has been. In “Competing with Free: The Impact of Movie Broadcasts on DVD Sales and Internet Piracy,” Michael D. Smith and Rahul Telang look mainly at the effects television broadcasts of movies have had on DVD sales. Part of this study takes into account whether or not illegal downloads of the films were available via file-sharing sites at the time of the broadcast. What they found was that, while the entertainment industry has long claimed that free content, be it TV Broadcasts (for which studios collect licensing fees) or illegal downloads on p2p sites (for which studios collect nothing), are causing revenue loss in their industry, neither broadcasts nor piracy seem to have any effect on after-market DVD sales of the films. The TV broadcasts, in fact, seem to have a positive effect on DVD sales, while the availability of pirated copies has no effect at all.
In other research, however, a 2007 TelevisonWeek article cites an MPAA study that found that “movie piracy cost $6.1 billion in lost annual revenue, while an industry anti-piracy expert said movie and television studios are spending more than $100 million per year in efforts to stop illegal content distribution.” The article makes no mention, however, of where these revenues were lost or what, exactly, they mean by “piracy” – a term that has been adopted by the media industry to describe any infringement on their copyrights. The article also makes no mention of lost revenue in the TV industry specifically, and in fact quotes an NBC executive who claims, “the number of people who view [pirated copies of TV shows] is not enough to hurt the premiere rating.”
Solutions
In addition to the many people who feel that fan activity like file sharing not only doesn’t hurt the popularity of a TV show but actually helps it, there is also a camp of people who believe that the only way for TV networks to deal effectively with the issue is to stop fighting the fans who file share, and instead embrace the fans and their practices. In “An Open Letter on TV Piracy,” in Multichannel News, writer/comedian Jay Black does just that. Black offers networks a fourfold solution to leverage file sharing for their own benefit. His four directives are: 1. Work with Nielson to adjust ratings so that they take into account people who watch TV on DVRs and through downloads; 2. Offer your shows for free online as soon as they are broadcast; 3. Acknowledge that the format of 18 minutes of commercials per half hour of programming is dead; 4. Make up for advertising revenue loss through in-program advertising. In his fourth point, Black offers a smart solution that is being adopted by networks with increasing frequency. TV shows are not only including promotional products within the show itself (the traditional idea of ‘product placement’ as used by shows like Project Runway) but are also experimenting with a new method called “pod-busting” in which the show segues seamlessly into an advertisement which features the cast of the show itself. Black gives the example of Jimmy Kimmel hawking Klondike bars on his show, and adds that “because Kimmel is involved and because the ads are funny and because it’s hard to tell where the show ends and the pitch begins, people are much more likely to watch them.”
A 2008 article in The Economist also offers positive solutions to the issues corporations have with file sharing and piracy. The article suggests that being able to track fan activity can be a boon to the content producers, as it allows them to know which movies and shows are being passed around online. The article states that embracing piracy can be advantageous not only to the entertainment industry but to other industries as well. It cites the fact that Microsoft tolerates rampant piracy of the MS Windows platform in China because it “has given it huge market share and will boost revenues in the long term, because users stick with Microsoft’s products when they go legit.” The article also points out the advantages of fan “remixing” not only of entertainment content, but in other industries as well. It offers the example of the Nike fan who created his own shoe design by using the Nike Air Force 1 sneakers as a base, and adding his own design on top of it. Not only did Nike not sue, they ended up purchasing the new creation and absorbing it into their line, creating a win/win situation for both remixer and remixed.
Conclusion
As we have seen, there is evidence to support the hypothesis that file sharing and other types of fan activity can actually benefit a media property, and that negative corporate reactions to this type of activity can mitigate the potential for fans to serve as advocates for the brand. It would appear, however, that very little research has been done on the effects that corporate litigation and takedowns have had on the affective relationship that the fan has to the media text, which is the object of their fandom. It would be my endeavor, therefore, to research this area through a combination of quantitative methods and discourse analysis in an attempt to discover any changes in fans relationship to the text following such negative corporate responses to fandom as cease-and-desist letters, DMCA takedowns, or actual litigation.
Works Cited
Albinesius, Chloe. “Google-Viacom Fight Gets Ugly, and Public.” PC Magazine Online. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2361557,00.asp, accessed April 11, 2010.
Black, Jay. “An Open Letter on Piracy.” Multichannel News. December 15, 2008. p. 25
Click, Melissa A. “Untidy: Fan Response to the soiling of Martha Stewart’s Spotless Image.” Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World. Ed. Jonathan Gray, Cornell Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington. New York: NYU Press, 2007. 179-197.
De Kosnik, Abigail. “Should Fan Fiction Be Free?” Cinema Journal 48.4 (2009): 118-124
Harrington, C. Lee, and Denise D. Bielby. “Global Fandom/Global Fan Studies.” Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World. Ed. Jonathan Gray, Cornell Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington. New York: NYU Press, 2007. 179-197.
Hibberd, James. “TV Industry Battles Piracy Hydra.” TelevisionWeek. August 13, 2007. Volume 26, Issue 32.
Lothian, Alexis. “Living in a Den of Thieves: Fan Video and Digital Challenges to Ownership.” Cinema Journal 48.4 (2009): 130-136
McLeod, Kembrew. “Confessions of an Intellectual (Property): Danger Mouse, Mickey Mouse, Sonny Bono, and My Long and Winding Path as a Copyright Activist.” Popular Music and Society. February 2005. Volume 28, Number 1. 79-93
“Piracy: Look for the silver lining.” The Economist [US] 19 July 2008. General OneFile. Web. 10 Apr. 2010.
Smith, Michael D., and Rahul Telang. “Competing With Free: The Impact of Movie Broadcasts on DVD Sales and Internet Piracy.” MIS Quarterly. June 2009. Volume 33, Number 2. 321-338.
Stroud, Rachel L. “Complementary Creation: Protecting Fan Fiction as Fair Use.” Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review. Winter 2010. 14.1
Yamamoto, Lauren. “Copyright Protection and Internet Fan Sites: Entertainment Industry Finds Solace in Traditional Copyright Law.” Loyola of Los Angeles Entertainment Law Review. Volume 20, Number 1. 1999-2000. 95-128.
