Sale of Fanart Banned in US Cons

[Lena]

(copy pasted from the Oztaku Forums, where I am based, just thought I'd give you guys a heads up on this)

"We're attending Anime Iowa in a couple of weeks and they have just banned the sale of all fan art in Artist's Alley"

Wow.

On my usual meanderings I can across a recent post in a thread on the Oyayocon (American Con) forums. Apparently, conventions are being pressured by companies to stop the sale of fanart in the US.

Now, I want to know how everyone would feel about this. From a personal note, i'm divided. I can see the legal side of the argument, and I respect that, and no longer produce fanart for sale purposes. I'm getting rid of all the remaining fanart i still have. But on the flip side I'm also good friends with a few people who do shitloads of fanart for sale at cons (Snowbunny, etc) and I know that this form of enforcement might cripple their con prospects if it were enforced here in Australia. Whilst six months ago I might have said, "well they chose to steal someone's IP" but now I really just feel an awkward sympathy.

But what does everyone think? After attending the EXCELLENT talk on Bootlegging at SMASH (which was really amusing considering the number of fanartists and the presence of actual bootleggers) I think the Australian cons really need to consider this, especially if the American market is cracking down.

Official thread announcement on AnimeIowa Forums (a con that HAS cracked down on fanart) - http://www.animeiowa.com/cgi-bin/smf/index.php?topic=3365.0
Ohayocon Forum (discussion begins page 2) - http://forums.ohayocon.org/viewtopic.php?t...asc&start=0

Now I'm going to go and research this further in case i've missed something. If anyone knows anything about this I'd like to hear it, especially if it contradicts this information . I really would like to get to the bottom of it.



Thoughts from you guys?
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[arutea]

hmm... interesting.... 

I think it will take a while before the banning will affect Australia, if at all.

But I do know from experience that some companies really don't like people making profits out of fan art *cough*squaresoft*cough* and I know some organisations here have been under fire for advertising (commercially) using fan art.

I don't do much fan art (I do some but I never show anyone because I only do it for learning purposes ...  ) So it doesn't really affect me. I've always seen fan art as something you shouldn't make money out of which is why I've never bothered to spend a lot of time doing it.

[Cabbage]

Ow.

(Note, the Ohayocon thread is gone now. The Modhammer strikes again.)

Any idea who pressured the cons? Was it American companies doing the subbing/redistribution, or the Japanese companies directly?
Personally I think, at least for the moment, the environment is slightly different here in Australia... But I'll sit back and see what happens, I guess.

I've been on both sides of the table, and have sold original as well as fanart. I'll be frank; I like both. I love seeing the wild and wonderful things people come up with off their own bat (eg. I adore this one that Sean Tay was selling last year)... But it's also a lot of fun seeing your favourite characters, uh, reinterpreted by artists. My favourite bit of fanart is in a style that's completely different to the original.

Sure, there are some who try to mimic the style of the original exactly, and there's always the crack pairings I'm not particularly fond of, but if you ban those you're also banning a whole bunch of stuff that does mix it up and does interesting things with some familiar characters. (... And if you only try to ban some of them, you end up in the nasty situation where someone has to arbitrarily decide whether something is "too close" to the original or not.)

Again this is just my own opinion; I'll be interested to see what direction SMASH! ends up taking.


Re: bootleggers at SMASH... As said over on OzTAKU boards already, yeah, we know, ouch. It was a stuff-up on our part; we're not happy with how it turned out.

[Lena]

At this time I can only find evidence from these two conventions, but if this does catch on it could make for an interesting few years whilst everything gets hammered out.

The fact that at least one of these conventions implemented the ban AFTER registration had already been open a while (and artists had registered) sort of implies that there was a great deal of pressure put on them to ban fanart. I can't see them putting such a ban on at a time like that otherwise.

The thread is gone? Bastards. I don't know who was applying the pressure, but it's evident that it must have been at least a bit. I'm inclined to think it was the Americans rather than the Japanese, as the Japanese tend to lean more towards thinking fan products are ok.

[Cabbage]

For reference, the discussion thread on the OzTAKU boards. Warning: language, "fan f--kers", that sort of thing.

The fact that at least one of these conventions implemented the ban AFTER registration had already been open a while (and artists had registered)...

Oh lawd.

Have any refunds been given out? I could see a whole bunch of artists cancelling after that sort of stunt. D:

[Lena]

Yeah, i didn't want to link to the thread because of that. We don't have very strict language rules

There were a few people discussing the possibility, but apparently in the policies of one of the cons it says that the rules can be changed, etc etc. I'll be watching to see what happens with that.