Money, profit, work
So there was a poll about making money from fan work. I ticked some boxes but then I thought and I'm not sure.

The thing is, if I start from first principles I get different answers than if I start from... thinking of it as fandom. From community standards? I've absorbed a lot along the way about what Should and Shouldn't happen, and when I look at it straight on it... doesn't feel as obvious as when I'm writing 'No money no harm' on a disclaimer.

I think the important thing for me is everyone gets fair swaps for their own work. I'm not comfortable with saying fan work 'should' be free, because it is work, same as house cleaning or doing the shopping is work, same as writing original fiction is work. Do work, get something for it. Only fair.

For fanfic what we get is more fanfic. Write a fic, read a fic. Goes around.

Except... now I'm thinking on it, and I'm thinking... if selling stories is fair, selling fanfic is fair too. We made writing, we get money. Like tie in books.

I've been thinking about Doctor Who, and how the line between fandom and pro is much more permeable than other fandoms I've been in before. Maybe more like comics? Writers currently doing Doctor Who started as fans. Most of them got to writing TV through writing licenced audio or tie in novel or comic adventures. And outside of that there was, between seasons, a small but ongoing selection of officially-not-DW films, with the same actors but some the numbers filed off. I'm used to thinking of the source texts being made by TPTB in one box and the fan texts being made by fans in another, and TPTB get money and made what we're all worshipping and we didn't made it so we don't get money. Only... in Doctor Who, fans made it. And they were getting money at sort of earlier stages than I'm used to thinking of. Possibly not enough to cover costs, so not actually 'profit', but the attempt may have been there. Only I wasn't there and I'm at least two steps of people writing about it removed from the entire edifice of history, so I might be getting it wrong.

I also think about music. I know sod all about the making of music. Except people do cover versions of songs, and remixes, and there's some kind of legal Thing that turned court battles into something everyone can live with. Yesno? But the thing is, there, everyone is making music, and some people are making music out of music, and quite often they trying to sell it... or get money in a hat for it.

We don't get street corner fanfic. That could be cool. Drabbles for hat money.

Probably only work outside cons or exhibitions though. Concentration of interested people.

So, anyway... I'm thinking the wall between money and no-money is currently controlled by the people that got there first... but in several cases by now the fans, the followers, have been doing more work for longer. And there has to be some way to... lower the wall? Make it into stairs? We start where nobody even wants to pay us, we wander along and make stuff people want to buy, we maybe end up making the TV show one day. Steps.

The people that got there first obviously deserve money for work too. They did big work everyone wants, they get fair swaps for it.

If the way we're using their work is fair... and we're putting new work in... that's transformative use, yesno? And then... fair swaps for our work is fair... we could get money?

That feels uncomfortable, yet follows from the logic. Why there that gap?

After writing all the rest of this I came back to that question and I think the answer is: Because we know we're already getting work for work from the exact people likely to also give money. That's like asking for pay twice. From people we like. When we're already getting way more than we give (because we're always outnumbered and same work each will always add up to everyone getting very much work in for small work out, which is pretty cool really, and unlike much to do with your actual finite resource money. Yesno?).


Is also partly because the whole basic concept of profit feels odd to me. Money for work, sure, but then profit says and-more-on-top, which I don't get. *shrugs* Not a capitalist, then.

... er, possibly I don't get it because I don't get it, having sold... one piece of work in my life, and that was kind of on accident (long story). Mostly I live because the government says so. Nice that.

ANYway...

The other why is because we've got this social thing going on where we get what we give. We get fanfic, we give fanfic, we have fair and equal exchange of work there.

And I like that.

If I had to pay for all my fanfic I read, I'd have zero money and much empty time. As it is I have much time for reading, much time for writing / reviewing / transcribing etc, and feel like I've swapped work for work.

Only, obviously, if I write one story a year (at best) and read one an hour... the whole thing gets a bit unequal.

And yet, we're cool with that. We don't demand the lurkers pay up and feedback us. I mean, it would be nice, but there's always more eyes than mouths and that works for us okay.

Also, I included transcribing on that list of fanac that is me contributing to the community... but because every single word of a transcript is belonging to the copyright holder, I'd never dream of charging money for it. I wouldn't/didn't even want to put it on a site with advertising. I keep my TW transcripts on my paid space, not the ad supported space. Though I might forget that was why when it next comes time to pay for LJ, because consistent and thoughtful are not words I tend to apply to me. But I'm happy calling it 'thing I do for fandom'... though to be honest I'd probably do it anyway, it's really just a good excuse that other people want to read them.

I think that last sentence says something about why no-money seems a more natural default position than +money for fanac. Because we'd do it anyway, so whyfor someone else pay us?

... I also think, from having done sociology and reading up on unequal distribution of work and how women do all this stuff that doesn't get counted and doesn't get paid for and props up the work of everyone... it's really kind of dangerous to think that way around. I mean, yeah, toilet needs cleaned, someone would do that anyway, but does that mean it don't count as work when someone does it? Not so much. Or people get stuck as default toilet cleaners, unappreciated, expected to do the work for no reward, underpaid when they go out and do the same work for other people even though the same logic don't apply, and it just sets up a structure where people get short changed.

Or for a less feminist logic, methinks this is part of why the Writers Strike had to happen - somebody somewhere got it in their head that writing isn't 'real' work. You can see a subtext of that in reporting about the strike.

Does enforcing no-money for fan writing devalue the +money of the pro writers?

Because if there's writing done for no-money and it's... at least sometimes... just as good as the +money sort, well, how much + is it bringing for its money?

So... if I follow my logic along, I get something that's backwards of not just fan standards but pro standards. That fans *should* be paid for fanwork, because it supports the value of pro work. Being paid a fair wage is good for everyone.

I don't want to take anything away from the people who make the stuff I love. I mean, duh, hello, wanting more stuff! Greedy brain here! They can't make without money, I happy to give money. I just... I'm not sure the pattern is right here because it seems to be making smaller amounts of making.



Now the other thing that happens is the 'you make work, we make money' model. And I phrase it that way with in my mind the voice of that now-closing website, or the explanation of Web2.0 I read the other day. But I'm sure the media creation pros hear it in the voice of fans.

I don't want to make money of someone else's work. I can't see that being fair any which way up.

I also can't see how I'm doing less work, as a fan writing a fanfic script, than a pro writing a first draft pro script for an ongoing TV series they didn't create. I mean, it's not as good yet... well, sometimes it is because some of the most godawful drek gets on television and I am not, I think, godawful, at least not in the ways that wind me personally up. ANYway, I can see how my quality isn't up there, and I can see how what I make isn't what the producers want, or else I'd be writing for them already. But I can't see how my work isn't work.

That's that transformative line again, isn't it? If it's just cut n paste, it isn't work, but if I put work in, that's a different category. The more I turn that idea over, the more I like it, and not just for my own benefit, but to build a better structure to work within.

Posting someone else's work on a website and then putting advertising around it? Well websites have running costs, web space and bandwidth and stuff I don't actually know much about, so something valued is getting added... but enough to call it fair? Really depends on the numbers.
Posting someone else's work without permission and with adding only web space and then putting adverts on it... that would be not-fair. With the old copyright laws.

And this is me saying this as a downloader. I'll DL stuff that's been on TV. Specially if the only barrier to me owning it already is a box with some buttons. This box has buttons, that box has buttons, I could even plug them in together, what's the diff if I get it on this box or that one? They call that one a recorder and this one downloads. No diff on my end.

But does my doing that send advertising revenue out to other people? Is someone making money out of the whole thing? Because then my logic about fanfic says DLing not fair. Even if me at this end and anon fan at other end aren't making any money. Someone is pinching off a bit in the middle maybe. Google or a torrent site or big files site or somewhere.

... I should definitely get around to figuring out the BBC downloads. Official site ones be more better anyway. Just involve new and different software.

And also: Bugger. Just found a logic that agrees with the anti-DL crowd.

The logic on the 'don't do piracy' things at the front of DVDs never worked for me. I mean, I wouldn't steal a handbag, because then I would be +handbag but, importantly, the other person would be -handbag. You can't be -TV show when it has already been on TV. If it's the BBC they can't even be -advertising revenue. And they weren't -eyeballs either, because I'm a strange obsessive who tends to watch all the repeats. So I watch that a bazillion times and I just think nobody is -TV and keep on DLing.

But somebody is +advertising revenue, and that's +money for no +work, and that's no fair.

Great. Ethics.

Anyone know a DL place with -advertising???

See now I'm thinking my benefit, so I'm trying to turn that upside down and shake it a bit and get back to a position where I can comfortably think "well, it's not like the content producers could be getting that advertising" and go download. Except (a) they could too, and probably do elsewhere actually, and (b) that leaves people copying fanwork to get advertising eyeballs as okay, which I don't want.

But neither do I want to pay for downloads that I will, when they're eventually available, pay for on DVD.

My ethics, they be shaky here. Bad BE.

For other things, where you swap tangible Things for tangible Money, then I have in the past treated that as straightfoward. I'll buy any old shiny from the dealer's room if I have shiny in my pocket. I've got more photos than I really know what to do with. Seriously, I could wallpaper, only it'd be really frellin expensive wallpaper, and also I'm already wall covered with books and DVDs. I bought keyrings until they scraped on the floor and then I stopped using keyrings so I didn't buy any more. But I didn't really distinguish between official licenced stuff and unofficial someone just printed it and stuck it together stuff. And I have myself produced things with the help of CafePress.com and another t-shirt place I forgot the name of. I didn't sell them, but I felt comfortable turning symbols into t-shirts without worrying about if I was taking someone else's work. Which now I'm not so sure was cool.

Oh, and come to think I did sell a bunch of fandom t-shirts, but we didn't put any official symbols on them or anything. Also the people that ordered them never bought them and I made a really quite embarrassing loss on the things and they trailed after me not being sold until that Highlander WorldWide con in Leeds the other year where I finally mournfully wailed 'free to a good home' and someone took the last of them. Which wasn't so much connected to the abstract discussion of exchange of goods for money, but as I understand it is a rather more common experience in the concrete than that mythical 'profit' beast. ANYway. They were one step removed from the source text, in that we weren't using bits, but they're only wanted at all because of the source text, so... that's like fanfic, only on a t-shirt.

But in either case, copyrighted symbols or uncopyrighted expressions of adoration, there's a t-shirt that cost money so it seems fair to buy that t-shirt. I didn't really think beyond that. Same with mugs and keyrings and all. I'll buy the Thing, and not think about what is on it. The same way I used to pay for tapes when tape trees were the closest to DLing we had.

Yes, dear readers, I was in fandom before the DVD. It's persistently weird how many of y'all are fully sentient yet can't remember those dim and distant days.

... actually I'm still waiting on my Sentinel DVDs. Is there really only the first season out? ... far as I can find.

But the thing is, tapes or t-shirts or badges, I thought of it as paying for the things and not the content. The content belong to TPTB. And that's why 'money' and 'profit' be not the same things at all. Money for these things? Fair enough. Profit from them? Be profit from TPTBs work.

Fanart is again transformative and we're back to did work gets something for it.

... where's the line between TPTBs copyright symbols and fanart using symbols in stuff? Like, I made a t-shirt with the Seal of Rassilon as a window into a starry night sky. Both components were acquired on the web. I wouldn't sell it for profit because the only bit I contributed was some inexpert mucking around in paintshop putting them together. But I've seen some fanart that added considerable more to the parts and pieces. So it's right complicated, again.



I just spent a bunch of hours poking this work-money-profit idea around. In the process I have found I don't do quite what I thought I was doing, and I don't agree with, well, me. Oops?

I'm also pretty sure that if I'd studied economics I'd find less of this surprising or new.


But, basic principle, people should get fair amounts back for work they give. Only the person who did the work though. And discovering or connecting work is work in itself but... but. Gets awkward.

From those principles: Multiple people put work in, same multiple people should get fair amounts out for swaps. But, that can be in form of using other people's work. Fanfic for fanfic, wiki entries for wiki entry, getting exact same back has to be fair.

But then there's the bit with the web space provided and all that. That person making money? Fair, they get back what was put in. That person making profit? Um... well, that's how capitalism works. And agents. And web providers. And, you know, lots of things. Money for services. It's just they're getting money where other people are getting work, and it don't feel fair, and then there's the possibility they're getting a lot more money than other people who put in visible work, and sometimes they're getting money a lot of times for work other people did once. And that's... difficult to like.

The lurker pyramid is a perennial iceberg in this equation. Too many lurkers to too few posts and comms crumple because the posters aren't getting anything back they didn't put in. Conversations with two people are more likely to last than conversations two people have in front of a hundred who aren't playing. Because, dude, freaky. And also, they're getting stuff out of it but putting none in, and there's only so long that feels fair.

I think the law puts a big line in between 'money' and 'no money' conditions. I do not know sufficient there.

But I can see that people do work for money and give money to work, or people do work for work, and that's not actually the same thing as doing work for free. And I don't think we work for free around here. I think when people feel they're working for free they go someplace else where they can get something back. And I think when people feel they're working for free (no feedback, no similar stuff from fellow workers) and somebody else is making money out of it... you won't see them for dust.