Hypothetically curious

[gwyn]

I am curious about how people would react to a scenario, because I think most people feel very differently about their stories than I do (for instance, the whole remix thing, which I've ranted about before). But, assume that you are a writer (or, possibly, a vidder), and you see icons in a community, created for the fandom you wrote that story in -- and the icons use quotations pulled from your story. You are not credited for the text, no information is given about where the text came from. (You're also not a BNF in the fandom, and your stories aren't exactly the must-see or the famous ones out there, so few people would be likely to spot the familiar text and know where it came from -- that it's not some famous poem or song.) The iconmaker, however, demands both credit in keywords and to know which of her icons are used.

Or, say you made a vid that's very well-known, and you spot a series of icons that use the song you vidded to, and the same frames or clips associated with the specific lyrics that are quoted in the icon's text. The vid is never mentioned as inspiration, and you have no idea if the iconmaker was referencing your vid or it was just coinkydink.

Obviously this is a different kettle of fishies from using art for icons that you appropriated from a fan artist without their permission, or stealing vid clips, or plagiarizing a story, etc. And it's hard to prove the vidding connection at all, but you can point to fic text pretty easily and say, "that's mine." What sorts of feelings would a hypothetical scenario like this engender for you?

[Poll #627386]

Comments

[fiercy.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty laid back, period. I mean, I believe that credit should be given and I am always very careful to credit those whose work I use. But for my own stuff, it just doesn't matter to me so much. My whole reason for being here is to share. Now...I would feel completely differently if, say, an icon I made showed up in someone else's icon journal and, not only do they insist on comment/credit, but they claim it as their own work. If they just say "hey, here's a bunch of icons I've collected, enjoy!" I'd be fine with that. But that's just me, and I'm not that serious about my work. I can totally understand others who are.

[agentxpndble.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty much going to "ditto" fiercy's comments. I'd probably keep an eye on the situation and speak up if it became convenient to do so or they evolved into an abuser.

It can be difficult to credit sometimes (I'm no saint myself) as you start to loose track of where you get things and so forth - I try and be understanding about that.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

I hate it when all anyone says to thoughtful comments is ICON SQUEE, but goddamn... that is the best icon EVER. Where did you get it? Is it sharable (I do credit, contrary to anything it might sound like in the poll!)?

[agentxpndble.livejournal.com]

Please use it if you like... I was trying to be clever using it - it's my trickiest credit. ;-) I have "made by [info]agentxpndble - SHARE (use with credit) based on icon by [info]starsong" You can make your own decisions on how necessary it is to include starsong.

Some pros icons here: http://www.livejournal.com/community/the_safehouse/76870.html Icons of all types at my journal (many of them are tagged so find a post and use the lj_icons tag to find the rest.)

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much! I will endeavor to credit. I may nag some more, too -- now I just have to figure out what to get rid of. I love my icons, and it's so hard -- who ever thought that 100 icons wouldn't be enough?

Feeling very othery today

[merricatk.livejournal.com]

1) In this instance, I would write to the icon-maker & say, "Hey, I'm glad you liked my story! It's so cool that you're quoting me!" And then I would tell everybody I thought might possibly be interested, because if it's being done as a "Wow, I loved this story, I want to quote it!" thing, well, that's a compliment. And if it's somebody trying to steal my stuff, I want everybody to see it & know that it *is* my stuff. And if I could have more icons, I would use it without bothering about permission because, hey, apparently we're good friends & don't need to ask or anything, right?

2) (I've never vidded, so this is harder, but) I think I'd write & say something like, "This is remarkable, that you & I not only thought the same story fit that fandom, but that we both thought the same images...." (& I would note similarities.) And, again, I would point this out to all & sundry because, again, either it's a coincidence, in which case, wow, or it's not, in which case people should see it.

3) I do think that people should give credit for their sources & don't know why they wouldn't want to.

[klia.livejournal.com]

What always irks me is the icon makers demand credit, even when they use another fan's work. Um, are they that obtuse that they can't see the double standard? Yeesh.

Re: #3, if it involves a vid, my theory is that vidders almost always credit their sources, so for the icon maker to have triple credits (icon maker + vidder + vidder's sources) seems a bit much. And, as you said, what's being quoted is the association the vidder made between song and images.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Re the vid credits, what I mean isn't a credit in someplace like the keywords line, but some kind of acknolwedgement in the initial post. A la, say I finish that BoB vid, and you are cruising through a BoB fan community and see icons posted, and a bunch of them are with lines from that vid, using the same clips (stills from the clips that accompany that line), and you go, hmmm... that certainly looks like it was inspired by my friend's vid, but there is no credit about the vid, no information of why the iconmaker chose that particular song and those particular shots of Nix and Winters... that kind of thing. Where at least somewhere in the post, the inspiration is mentioned if it is indeed inspired by the vid.

[klia.livejournal.com]

Yes, if they're posting icons to a community that were inspired by a vid, then yes, they should definitely credit the source of their inspiration. I mean, how hard would it be to say you made a bunch of icons, iinspired by so-and-so's vid, with a link?

It's that same "I deserve/demand credit for *my* efforts, but I don't give a rat's ass about anyone else's hard work" crap all over again, isn't it?

[zoerayne]

I'd post, with links, in my LJ. Something along the lines of, "Oh, wow, how flattering! Person X liked my story y (or vid y) enough to make icons about it! That's so totally flattering!"

That way, I wouldn't be perceived as a hardass by other people -- plausible deniability *g* -- and the icon maker would be forced to acknowledge where the text/inspiration came from or look like a jerk.

Manipulative? Me? Nah. *G*

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's very clever!

I am a big fan of manipulation. ;-)

[ixchel55.livejournal.com]

Looks like I went with the majority of the people who took the poll but I actually like merricatk's comments. I'm just to lazy to spell it out. LOL!

I'm not that picky about people giving me credit for things I've created (as long as they don't claim them as their own), but the double standards of demanding credit for their work but not giving the same respect to others just makes me pissy.

BTW, microscopic type on icons drives me bat-shit, too. *g*

[destina.livejournal.com]

Oh,I'm going to get into so much trouble for being honest. *sigh* I have to honestly say that I don't care much either way, and it'd depend on my mood at the moment and the identity of the person who made the icon, re whether or not I said something to them. If someone quoted a story of mine, that's the situation where I'd be most likely to write and ask for attribution. A vid, much less so. Which is not a comment on the comparative value of fannishly creative work in the general sense, just on my own feelings about *my* work.

I think it's good form to credit any text one takes, or any creative source, but I sometimes sense that I'm in the minority on that, fannishly speaking.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Yeah -- I think my theory in starting this and why I did the poll is that good form has largely left the building in terms of the fannish community now, on the Internet. That it's a take what you want free for all. But I have found the responses to this really interesting -- in some ways, confirming my theory, but also that we have diferent standards sometimes for ourselves than we would for the community at large.

[bogwitch.livejournal.com]

I'd probably leave a sarky comment.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Me, too!! I'm surprised more people didn't say that. But then... I've managed to offend nearly everyone I've ever met at some point, so that's probably indicative of why.

[bogwitch.livejournal.com]

I manage to side-step that part usually.

[smithereen.livejournal.com]

Something a little like this happened to me once. Lines from a poem I wrote were used in a wallpaper someone made and I wasn't given credit. I found it simultaneously flattering and annoying. Cause I'm not a poet at all so it surprised and pleased me to see anyone liked my really lame attempt. But at the same time it did annoy me because I tend to feel like you should give credit where credit is due. I mean, I once used another fan's quotes on some icons I made and I got permission to use their quotes first and then credited them with linkage when I posted. Cause really...outside of intellectual property issues, which are reason enough on their own, I feel like if you find something you like enough to quote, then why not share it with everyone so they can enjoy it too.

I've been plagiarized in the whole chunks of my fic copied and pasted into someone else's fic sense before too and in that case I dragged the person onto the mat and got her fic taken down from every archive I could find. But in the case of the wallpaper I didn't bother to demand credit because it was just a crappy poem I didn't really care about, and they weren't overtly taking credit for the quote themselves. *shrug* I do think I (or anyone) would have been justified in demanding credit in that situation (or in the text on icons situation), but I personally let it slide.

In the case of the duplicated vid scenes/characters etc. I don't think there's much you can do. Because it's too hard to PROVE that it's not a coincidence. It's kind of galling, but I wouldn't bother getting into it there just because it'd be a sucking quagmire, totally unwinnable, and destined to end up on fandom_wank. *G*

I think people should credit for legible quotes on icons regardless of whether they demand credit themselves, but doubly so if they do demand credit. But the illegible text that looks like a line and is for "decoration" I don't see any point in requiring credit for. Except that if someone asks them what it says they should say where it comes from when they translate it into legible english. In other words, it only becomes a "quote" once you can actually read it. *G*

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think that, especially with fannish things, where we're already retextualizing material created by others, there's a gray area around attributions that is harder to discern. And the plagiarism thing muddies it to a certain degree.

One thing that interests me is that almost no one has said that it would be important to give some kind of acknowledgement to textual source so that people could go find the original work. And I wonder to some degree if that has to do with the aspects of community in fandom eroding so much these days on the faceless internet. Now it's take what you want, don't acknowledge others... this is why I did the poll. I'm really intrigued by how others see situations like this. I know how *I* would react, but I find it kind of sociologically interesting to see how others view it.

[lapillus]

Unless the icon creator was claiming to be the source of the quotes I probably wouldn't care much and if it's tiny text I definitely don't care - tiny text is, for me, a graphic element, not a true textual one. If I was feeling more active than usual I might stick a note in their journal saying that I am pleased that they were inspired by my work, because, frankly, if they liked it enough to steal from it means I was doing something right. And I'd probably put up a notice in my journal that someone has icons made from my stuff, not to go and attack them but to offer them to other folks who happen to like it. The only time I'd turn huffy is if icon maker got huffy about me identifying myself with the icons. At that point I'll happily loose my friends on them. However, as a general rule, I feel that practical control of intellectual property ends once it leaves the tips of your fingers and that thinking other wise or expecting others to act otherwise is probably delusional. This doesn't mean that I don't think that attribution and even consultation with creators of source is other than a politeness and a useful thing to do or that it's unfair to tax them with being rude and unhelpful.

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

The first one is relatively easy for me to answer, because it's happened to me; I can't remember how many times, but - let's be conservative and say at least a dozen. (Although not ever fic, let me emphasize, just with my regular LJ posts. It's possible I'd feel more ownership of my fic, although I doubt it; after all, my LJ posts are, to me, all me - my voice and everything - and thus feel like more personal writing.) Generally, I feel - well, first, I have this weird, "Hmmm, that sounds...oddly familiar" moment, but then I feel happy. "Oh, someone liked my work enough to quote it!"

I feel a bit weirder about it when I don't recognize the user at all, but even then, I'm fine with it. I'm overjoyed if someone uses my words and asks me in advance, of course, and nearly as overjoyed if someone uses my words and tells me about it or offers credit somewhere, but it's also nice (and very flattering) to be surprised in the course of random browsing. (Plagiarism is an entirely different story, though.)

The vid question is much harder to answer. I don't vid, and I can't imagine how I'd feel in that situation. From the sidelines, vidding looks so hard, so effort-intensive, and seems to get so much less fannish love, that I think it would be important to acknowledge that a vid was the inspiration for something.

And it's tough to prove that the vid was the inspiration if it isn't credited. This isn't precisely the same situation, but I think it's relevant: I know of several cases in which two vidders used the same song for the same source and used a number of the same clips for the same lyrics. In (at least, because I don't know vidders too well) one such case, both vidders are relatively well-known. I suspect that this is usually a case of parallel evolution. The icons could be, too, and if the icon-maker doesn't say so one way or the other, I think the vidder would be driven insane by wondering. (If I was the vidder in that situation, I'd probably ask just so I knew for sure. Something like, "Oh! This is so interesting to me, because I have a vid for this fandom using this same song, and we used a lot of the same images, too. I guess the song really evokes this canon, huh?")

And as for the third question - I'm uncomfortable using the word "should" in this context. (For personal reasons. That word had consequences in my youth.) So I'll just say that I think it's a good thing to credit all sources and inspirations, and to err on the side of over-crediting if there's some doubt. (Someone can always ask you to remove the credit, after all.)

(Further side note: is this a reference to the recent vid that seemed to be potentially, well, inspired by one of yours?)

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Yes, good points all. I'm intrigued by this whole thing because of a number of issues I've seen recently and I didn't want to say whether it was driven by anything personal, because then I figured people would get all upset -- but I also didn't want to say that it hadn't happened to me, because I wanted to see how people would react. I find when people don't know if it's real or not, they tend to respond, whereas real conflagrations or no possibility of it happening might mean no response at all.

I did find a series of icons that I think may have used some text from one of my stories, but I can't tell because only one word from each lines readable, and barely even then. And the icon I used with this post bears a striking resemblance to a very well-known vid -- that's partly why I love the icon, but in neither case was anything otherwise mentioned by the iconmaker. No text acknowledgements, and certainly no connection to the vid. The vid thing is a lot harder to connect dots to, as you say. I assume it's just coincidence, but I like the icon because it does remind me a lot of a vid I love, too.

One of the things that interests me in a sociological way is that for me, since fandom is all about sharing and community, appropriating (not even talking about plagiarism or clip theft, just appropriation of some kind with more benign intentions) something without attribution of some sort loses us part of the community. If we don't know where the text comes from if it's fannish source, and we love some icons and use them, we can't direct people to the stories they came from, for instance. For a person like me, with low traffic and very little feedback, that could be a huge bonus in the sharing/community sweepstakes that is then lost. Same for vidding. It's not a thing I'm all cranky about, just something that interests me because I do believe that the rise of internet fandom has pretty much eradicated the sense of community in all but a small portion of fandom anymore.

And:
(Further side note: is this a reference to the recent vid that seemed to be potentially, well, inspired by one of yours?)

Ooo! Ooo!! There's a vid that was inspired by something I did??? I had no idea!! I'm all intrigued. Is it something I can get morally outraged about and create a stink in my LJ? I'm so excited, I could loose my minions upon the world!

(and just because I have to, this is my obligatory JOKE warning, since people always seem to believe I'm serious and call me a bitch. I don't even have minions, dude.)

[killabeez.livejournal.com]

The part where the icon-maker insists on being credited and commented-to is the only part of this scenario that really tweaks me. I would ignore it because I really don't mind what happens to my stuff (short of outright plagiarism) after it's out there. A few times, people have taken my photo manips and used them in vids without asking or crediting me, and that bugged me a tiny bit, but mainly because I feel that vids are more visible/popular/likely to get passed around than photo manips, and I worry a bit about the actors seeing them.

But though I'd ignore it, I wouldn't forget it. The obnoxiousness of taking the ideas and not crediting, plus demanding credit, would pretty much make me write that person off, and I'd avoid engaging them at any future time. I'd feel like I had nothing to say to a person like that.

Tiny text on icons is irritating by itself. :-P

The funny thing is that although I have no trouble with people using my stuff, remixing me, what have you, I completely sympathize and support those that do have a problem with it. That's why I don't often mention in public how I feel about it. I don't want to undermine the very valuable commodity of respect among fans. Just because I don't mind sharing doesn't mean that courtesy should be ignored. So, would I care if it happened to me? Not really. Do I care that it happens at all? Yes, I do, it's lame. Is that a contradiction? Probably.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

No, I get that -- so I don't think it's lame! I'm fiercely protective of my writing, but less so about my vids(clip theft, though, is a whole different issue and one I confess scares me a little, I think just because I struggle so much with computer vidding).

What intrigues me about this and why I did the poll is that I'm interested in how we see community standards, and where attribution and inspiration fit into that. I contend that except for a small percentage of us, fandom has pretty much lost any sense of community it once had. That it's largely a free for all for most folks, and taking or not attributing or denying information is more common. For most people it seems to be about their personal feelings on how they view their work, and that interests me because for a lot of people, it isn't about how the larger community might perceive it, and whether or not it is a standard.

That's why your answer is so interesting -- it may not bother you personally, but it bothers you if the community is affected, and that is the kind of info I was after!

[ancarett]

Here via voleuse and I would say that I'd be flattered if someone used part of my fic in an icon or reproduced a vid scene in their icon/header (the latter, I'd probably be oblivious enough to not even notice). I'd probably go all fangirl back on them with a squee of excitement to see my words anew.

That said, I have been known to get really testy when someone took a very involved icon I made, blew it up larger (pixelating the heck out of it) and claimed it as her own "artwork."

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I think it's hard to know where the lines are, which was what I was interested in finding out. There's been a commonality of responses, but it's by no means a representative sampling of fandom at large.

[keiko-kirin.livejournal.com]

Lines from your fic are quoted in icons, but you are not credited. You:

Publicly, I would ignore it, because it's flattering.

Privately, I would bitch to the people I know, because it would bug me.

It's possible to be flattered and bugged at the same time.

Same answer for vids, although I checked the Assume that someone saw your vid and capitalized on it, but didn't bother to credit you option, because that applies as well.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

I think I would do the same thing -- rise above in public, but gripe to my friends. I think for me the big issue is that by not crediting, they're denying people the chance to discover other work they may not have seen. And that sometimes bothers me, because I'm all about trying to drive people to find new stories, vids, whatever if I can contribute in any way. It's community building, so I'm not sure why at times I see people not providing acknolwedgement of other fans.