For Those Unhappy With Unauthorized Sharing of Fanworks....

When has fandom ever *not* shared. Even in the face of warnings like the ones below. It is like premarital sex. There is the Pope and the local priest thundering about how it is not done/should not be done/wasn't done as much in those olden more morally upstanding days...and all the while everyone just goes out and keeps doing it all over the place. The problem is not the doing...it is the lying about the doing and the pretending there is no doing and trying to shame and shun those for the doing.

From Fanlore:

"At least one copy of the Pros circuit version contains a front page with a copyright notice "1983 by Blue Jay Press" and a statement:

"A limited edition printing of 50. Copy number 33...Not to be copied or otherwise reproduced without permission in writing from Blue Jay Press. This copy of PAINTING IN THE CLOUDS remains the property of Blue Jay Press, who reserve the right to ask for its return at any future date."

Below in handwriting someone has written:
"[N], I don't have permission [to copy this story] and I don't care. It's Lewis B-day today and I'm being anarchic. (Just don't tell [P] or she'll yell at me)."

Above in different handwriting:
"K&J, [N] sent me a copy of her copy before I got mine....a year ago I guess, as Lew's Birthday is May 27. Read this before Masquerade."

There is no author credit on the story.

Bits of history like this make me happier to be a fan...to know that we are still human and have always been human and (hopefully) will stay human down the road.

Every Time Copyright Is Invoked, A Fair Use Angel Loses Their Wings

The Copyright Monopoly Was Created As A Censorship Instrument – And Is Still Used As One

"When the printing press hit Europe, royalty and clergy panicked. All of a sudden, they had lost the gatekeeper position of determining what culture and knowledge was available to the masses, and by extension, lost control of the political discourse of their time.

At the time, different regimes reacted differently to the threat. France reacted by banning book shops altogether and banning the use of the printing press under penalty of death. The ban was utterly ineffective. (Yes, you read that right: the penalty for unauthorized copying has been escalated as far as the death penalty, still without effect.)....

[snip]

In this environment, [Queen Mary I of England] sought a further means to suppress free speech and political dissent. Seeing how France’s death penalty against the printing press had failed miserably, she instead opted for an unholy alliance between capital and the crown. Mary I handed out a printing monopoly on May 4, 1557 to the London Company of Stationers. In return for a lucrative monopoly of printing everything in England, the company would agree to not print anything the Crown’s censors deemed politically insubordinate.

The scheme worked to suppress dissent and free thought, and censorship was successfully introduced. The monopoly was called copyright, the word from an internal registry with the London Company of Stationers. Thus, the unholy alliance of the copyright monopoly was forged in the blood of political dissent."

A Follow-up To My Star Trek Audio Recording Post

My earlier post about  Star Trek audio recordings is here. Today, I came across this essay written by Lillian Stewart Carl in which she talks about her friendship with Lois Bujold, their love of Star Trek and the Star Trek fanzine they wrote and published (one of the earliest media fanzines). I am only quoting the section about the audio recordings, but the entire essay is worth a read:

"Then, one fall, I returned home from a vacation to find Lois enthusing over a new television program, one that linked naturally into her years of reading science fiction.

I watched Star Trek. I fell for it too. Spock made intelligence classy. He was so cool, so—unattainable. Unlike Kirk, who was incessantly Available. And there were women on the Enterprise. They wore miniskirts and said, “Hailing frequencies open,” and “Captain, I'm scared”, but they were female nonetheless.

Every Thursday evening during our senior year found us sitting in front of Lois's television (she had the color set) watching Star Trek.We suborned other friends into joining us. We rigged up Lois's father's reel-to-reel tape recorder and recorded each episode—audio only, the concept of the VCR being science fiction itself.

The tape would pick up the sound of the telephone ringing in the background, chairs scooting, popcorn crunching. And during the previews to the episode This Side of Paradise, it recorded half-a-dozen female squeals as Spock actually (be still, my teenage hormones) smiled!

I wish we still had the tape which immortalized her mother's voice saying, “You girls are going to be so embarrassed when you grow up and remember how you acted over this program.”

....

Our graduation from high school took place on a Thursday night, forcing us to miss the episode Shore Leave. Strangely, our families refused to attend the ceremonies without us. The younger sister of a friend was deputized to do the taping and fill in the video portion with gestures and expressions.

The next fall I went away to college, in a town that had only two television stations, neither of which showed Star Trek. Lots transcribed the episode Amok Time, including the stage directions (“bowl of soup flies across passageway”) and sent it to me. My roommate sniffed and said I was psychologically abnormal. But another friend gave me a poster of Spock."