Dear Diary...

The Southern Enclave was one of the later Star Wars letterzines. It bridged the print fanzine era of fandom and continued well into the days of Internet fandom (the last issue was published in 2000).  Years ago, the editor scanned a few issues of her letterzine and posted them online. She is now scanning the rest which is how we came across this adorable letter from one of the contributors:

"I have this recurring dream; I'm in the dealers' room, with a box that seems to hold an endless supply of inch-thick, color cover fanzines. I'm tossing them behind me, saying, "They're free! Free! Take one! They're FREE!!! And everyone has this beautiful smile on their faces as the zine falls into their hands. My feet aren't touching the floor, I'm just floating through the aisle, and there is harp music in the background."  

And speaking of The Southern Enclave, in 1987 Maggie N, fed up with the eternal warnings debate created a handy dandy labeling guide for your fanfic. It is only a bit tongue in cheek.

OTW Legal Needs Your Help

Originally posted by otw_staff at Legal Needs Your Help!


The OTW's Legal Advocacy project engages in legal cases and responds to fan requests that involve matters of U.S. copyright and fans' rights to engage in fan practices such as creating fanworks.

But now our Legal Committee needs your help. We are helping with some (confidential, for now) court filings and would like to use the following information to help the drafters shape the arguments. We might possibly include fans' stories of facing legal difficulties, but would only do that with express permission from the fan.

What we need is the following:

(1) DMCA take-downs. We'd like to hear from fans who have received DMCA takedown requests for their transformative fanworks and have had to decide whether to counter-notify that their fanworks are fair use and therefore don't violate copyright law. We'd like to hear what they decided to do, why they made that decision, and what the outcome was for them.

AND

(2) Fans who’ve been told that their transformative fanworks violate someone’s rights of publicity, or who have considered rights of publicity in deciding whether or not to make a fanwork. We're particularly interested in published accounts about the relationship between fandom and rights of publicity.

In both cases, all communications will remain entirely confidential. We won't tell anyone's story or use anyone's name (or pseudonym) without their express permission. But we want to make contact with people who have faced these situations -- their stories will help us make legal arguments that, we hope, will prevent future challenges and take-downs of fans and fanworks.

If you have experienced either of these two things, or encountered news items about either of them, please contact Legal. If you know of someone who has experienced a DMCA takedown request, please direct them to this post. We need to hear from people by October 11. Thanks for your help!