Should readers get permission to make podfic?

[jesse_the_k]

While I just argued that the act of podficcing adds "fannish value" to a work, I'm unsure that readers must obtain an OK from the writer to make a recording.

Since I'm a newbie, I did some research. While I don't think it's possible for a podfic to fundamentally change a source in the same way, I started with remixes, since there's the same "permission" issue there. It seems most remix challenges are based on a mutual remix: by participating in writing, each fan also permits their work to be remixed (with one "safe" work held inviolate).

The Fanlore Wiki told me:

 begin quote 
Though remixing in both fanfiction and vidding has become enormously popular, not all fans embrace the concept. [... snip ...] Though some fans feel any story is fair game for remixing, others believe that permission should be gained from the author first before using their work as a jumping-off point. Many fans feel it's hypocritical to reuse the original creations of the copyright holders in the canon while protesting that anyone should be allowed to remake their fanworks.
 quote ends 

Current metadata don't state whether the podfic's reader has the writer's permission. Would the absence, permission or refusal of writer's OK change how you'd choose or read podfics?

Comments

[fish_echo]

There are a couple of aspects to my answer:

1. I acknowledge that it is currently considered best practice for the reader to have the author's permission. I do not know what my opinion is on whither that *should* be the community best practice. For me personally, I have a blanket transformative works policy, so clearly I support the idea of communal fannish sandboxes (but I respect that I cannot force this opinion on everyone else).

2. Given point 1, whenever I see a podfic, I assume that author permission has been obtained (either through explicit asking or via the author's transformative works policy) unless it is otherwise stated. I actually strongly dislike the idea that the reader is obligated to state that authorial permission was obtained because somehow requiring to state that seems very... ummm, rule-happy? and like it is indicitive of a culture of lack of trust. I don't know, I'm not sure my emotional response is actually rational on this one, but it is how I feel.

3. Despite what I said in point 1, in the case of freely accessible orphaned work**, I have no ethical problem with podfic being created even though the author cannot be contacted for permission. This is because even though the author is no longer in fandom/associated with the work and thus cannot give explicit permission, I feel that the act of leaving the work there for reading grants something which feels like implicit permission to me.***

**here defined as something which is by a writer who is either no longer in fandom or has removed the author name and is: (a) still up on a webpage somewhere and I can get to it without using a cache, or (b) was up on a webpage abandoned and sometimes after it was abandoned the site went down and thus it is only accessible via a cache (a good example here is GeoCities-- if the 'last updated' list on a fanworks page was several years before GeoCities came down then I assume that the reason that the story isn't accessible anymore isn't so much to do with the fact that the author doesn't want the story read as it is that the author didn't care/notice that the webhost was going under), or (c) the stories have been pulled from the web but the author has given permission that any copies of the stories which were saved to hard drives can continue to be circulated, or (d) I can't right now think of anything else, but it's possible that there are more things that fit into this category. However, if the author intentionally pulled the stories from the web (even if they may still be accessible via caches), it seems like a violation of point 1 to record them. (However, this does not address whither or not point 1 ought to be true. And if the fannish custom changes on that point, then my opinion on this case would change.) I will say that if the fic was intentionally removed from all sites and the author expressed explicit preference for electronic copies to not be circulated then I feel that it is proper to obtain explicit permission for recording the podfic.

***After all, the work is still available online for those fannish folk who wish to read it. Which means, in my opinion, that the transformative aspect of reading it aloud and recording it does not substantially change the work that idea and thus I assume that the author would be fine with it.


Wow, this is longer and more complicated than it seemed in my head. I hope I succeeded in translating these thoughts to paper properly.

[zvi]

I just wanted to let you know that this sort of interesting and well-thought comment is exactly the sort of thinky stuff I was hoping this community would produce. I just didn't have a response to it, and I was giving other people a chance to respond. But as no one has, I just wanted to reassure you that you were heard.

Thanks for due consideration

[jesse_the_k]

That wasn't tl;dr at all. It's the kind of exploration I hoped this thread could evince.

More experienced minds than mine have contemplated the ethics of cache-mining. (And I'd love to get pointed to them.)

In the abstract, I can respect someone's decision to pull it off the net. If it's not currently served, then taking it from the cache is "sneaky," and undermining their decision.

OTOH, I've stumbled on things I've forgotten I created on my very own hard-drive. It's easy to lose track of all the ideas and efforts that have burbled out of me along the years. So does benign neglect mean implicit permission?

And on the important third hand, I enjoy fanfic precisely because it serves my id-driven "must! have! fic!" needs. When I'm in that frame of mind, it's hard to discriminate between "sneaking around TPTB" and "sneaking around a fanfic author." (Not advocating, mind you, just reporting.)