Should Fan Art Be Illegal? 

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the problem with waiting for something to become "public domain" is it never will. Take for instance Disney, whenever one of their works (such as the characterised mouse) is about to expire they lobby the government with a boatload of money to extend copyright law to last another 50 years because (insert reason here)

Hearing the creator of Fox in Space was a pleasant surprise. Great guy and he does great work.

Thanks for making a video about this! ^^ I'm glad more people are being made aware of the legal situation and the anxiety that follows fan creations and creators of fan projects. I really wish you'd mentioned the situation surrounding compulsory licensing and cover songs though. It's definitely a weird exception, but it's a pretty huge, weird exception, and very worth mentioning. Compulsory cover song licensing has protected cover bands for decades, and with more indie/self-publishing services recently (past 5 years or so) branching into cover song licensing, that protection has recently enabled passionate fans and creators to create musical tributes to their favourite IPs and to legally license and publish these works. It's for instance enabled an entire community of Video Game Cover Musicians to grow and thrive. As a musician who can make a living due to cover song licensing, I'm definitely 100% biased, and it's not a perfect solution for every situation, but I think compulsory licensing can be a great way for artists to honor an IP that's close to their heart. while also giving back to the owner of the IP, both in terms of revenue and awareness. I realize that there's a difference between making a high budget fan film (using several established characters, settings and lore) and making a song cover (it's definitely an inherently limited format in terms of storytelling), but I still think compulsory licensing could be a step in the right direction for more art forms. I personally believe that as long as everyone's getting paid for their hard work, and there's a clear distinction between fan works and works by the IP holder, people should be able to make fan-art in all shapes and scopes. Oh well, sorry for the lengthy comment! Been watching your videos for a long time. Always a pleasure to watch them! Keep up the great work! c:

When I was a child, I drew a crayon picture of Mario. In response, Nintendo personally sent lawyers to my house to burn the picture and beat me within an inch of my life.

It’s really interesting to see how different companies handle things made by fans. Nintendo is famously awful for it, but there’s a ton of stuff that falls into a gray area. One instance I heard of that was actually really cool involved the creator of Five Nights At Freddy’s. Instead of shutting down people’s fan games and such, he’s actively supported the development of them, gotten their creators merch deals and ports to major consoles, and other cool stuff. In a perfect world, it would be neat for other large companies to do similar things and support their fans and their creations.

I loved a fox in space it’s pure gold

Now, I'm not informed enough to offer suggestive tweaks to current laws, but from what I've experienced, I think they're mostly alright the way they are, as long as measures are taken to parody or distance the fan work from the original IP. One thing I've noticed with 90% of the shut-down fan projects, is that the names of these fan projects contained the names of the IP's. Examples like "Super Mario Brothers Z," "Super Mario 64 HD Remake," "Pokemon Uranium," "Another Metroid 2 Remake." All of these projects that were "Cease and Desist"'ed have titles that make them sound like something coming from Nintendo. For example, change the name "Another Metroid 2 Remake," over to "Sammy the Bounty Huntress in Space: The Sequeling." Instead of "Star Fox: The Animated Series," just call it "A Fox in Space." You have to change it up, alter the characters a bit, or make it parody. When you use the original IP's title in the name of your fan work, you're just asking for trouble. Thanks again for letting me be a part of this!

If you want to get negative press real quick and repellant for customers, yes. It's literally free advertising and unpaid content creation.

Interesting how fanart is illegal, but many studios and rights holders still promote it on social media

The next time one of my children draws a disney character/ copyrighted work I'm going to call the police.

Even before he died and his works fell into public domain, H.P. Lovecraft was famous for allowing authors to use his monsters in their stories and give shoutouts to others' in his works. If only there was a creator who was interested in making a universe that was not only beloved but easy to contribute to without a bunch of legal entanglements.

See i guess I'm different. Everytime someone makes fanart of me, I get so excited that someone took personal time out of there day to go out of their way to make something for me. I would never dream of considering illegal or bad

In all honesty fan creations are crucial in the modern day, and companies should incorporate them better.

The thing that makes me saddest of all is that copyright isn't currently based on how long a work should be profitable before entering the public domain, or how long is a reasonable amount of time to make your money before others can get in on the idea (like patents), but exactly long enough that none of Disney's products ever leave copyright protection. Money speaks, in this case.

The irony is most of the original creators of many IP's are long dead, sold, or lost the rights to their creations and are in the hands of unrelated parties. A vast majority of corporate products are technically just funded fanfiction given a license of approval by a corporate entity.

The year is 2057. Small groups of artists are hiding out in underground studios while the large corporations hunt down those who would infringe their trademarks. Mickey Mouse is now a dystopian tyrant.

if fanart is illegal then I’m serving MULTIPLE lifetimes in jail

"it's illegal to sell fan art" Fan artists that sell at conventions: *carry on like normal*

Everytime I see a badly made officially licensed game, I feel a surge of jealousy of all the talented people who deserve a shot at the IP

So many people who read my fanfic said it was a "traditional book" quality and they would buy it and it kinda sucks, working overnights at McDonald's and having all these people offer to buy my writing - but not being able to sell this book because it is a fanfiction. I started writing an original novel to publish now that I know people actually like what I do, but it would be really nice to publish the book hundreds of people fell in love with.

Illegal or legal, sometimes it's Fanart that keeps long dead franchises alive.

I like how Scott Cawthon did it. He created this popular property and people made a bunch of fan games. Instead of cease and desisting them he essentially made a deal with them to legally sell those fan games for a cut. If I had a massive multimillion dollar property and I saw people making amazing fan works of it, I would let them sell it and just give a cut to the copyright holder. To me it's a win win. The copyright holder is making money off their property whilst supporting artists who are breathing new life into said property.

As a fanfiction writer and fan-artist, this recommendation got me scared

This is happened to me on, I admit, a much smaller scale. I was working on a video which chronicles the history of logos that a company (in particular 20th Century Studios), and I spent a week and a half working on it, took a whole day to upload it, and I woke up in the morning to see that Fox claimed the copyrights as their own and I had to do something else for that video. (I ended up doing PBS) What's funny is that Fox has not owned 20th Century Studios, brand names, or trademarks since last year, yet they still have time to get after me to make a video that I DO NOT PROFIT OFF OF. So, technically, I know how this feels on a very reduced scale.

Fandom would be so dull without fanart Tbh

This reminds me of the interesting case of Archive of Our Own. It's a non-profit fanfiction website run by volunteers born out of the legal issues surrounding fanfiction. People would be threatened with legal action because of their fanfiction, and would be forced to take down things they've worked endlessly hard on(there's fanfiction that are millions of words long). As a result, fan coders, fans with legal knowledge, and more banded together to make an archive of everything that'd be able to defend itself. It's a really interesting case, and I suggest for anyone interested to do further research, they even received a Hugo Award for their efforts.

I'm reminded of Sonic and The Black Knight for when Sega actually included a whole section of wholesome fanart for everyone to look at in there

I remember when Wattpad and AO3 writers had to put a “THESE ARENT MY CHARACTERS” disclaimer before every fic bc everyone was scared they’d get arrested.

I love how the Minecraft team started hiring mod creators to help them create new interesting mobs and bring in new ideas. I think fan creations can be a great way to find good talented people with passion for the franchise they're creating fan works for and it would be great if companies could learn that and maybe make deals with fan creators that make quality stuff.

I feel like in these sorts of conversations, we never really hear from "the other side." Which is to say, representatives of some large established, copyrighted property. As a result, there tends to be a lot of speculation about what the companies "should" do or think, but I think it would be helpful to hear their defense of the status quo, and possible rebuttal to common fan arguments (ie, "this is just free advertising for you!" etc).

I'd honestly tell these giant companies "fuck your IP rules" You're a huge company with enough money. You're not gonna die by losing 20 bucks from fan art. Literally no company has gotten bankrupt from fan art. Copyright is bullshit because it's never enforced when needed and needless enforced when not needed.

I don't know if you've ever heard of Touhou, it's a Japanese game series that has been incredibly open to fanworks to the point of even supporting some; as a result, fanworks flood out of the community. These fanworks range from games to art to music, even an entirely fan-made anime; some of the most popular of these works have over 10 million views on youtube, you might have even seen some already without knowing. Touhou has proven to be a great example of what can happen when you let fans express their love for a series without barriers and it has grown as a result.

Fanmade material definitely draws some people back to the original. There are shows that I never would have watched under normal circumstances, but did because a fanfic writer whose work I enjoyed gave me a thoughtful glimpse into their characters and worlds.

If fanart had been illegal throughout history, then wow would a lot of old works be hit.

Seems like LegalEagle still has flashbacks to the omegaverse lawsuit.

At one point, Nintendo welcomed fan art by featuring it in their official magazines.

Aren't we humans who get excited about the things we like and inherently want to share it with others, specially with those into the same stuff we are? I think people creating fanart are not actively trying to make money out of something. They just want to express themselves and share their work with their community. Of course they need resources, thus the donations and other ways of funding. Copyright is such an issue, specially in platforms like RU-vid where you can get striked if something slightly ressembles some copyrighted work.

As a fan-artist this notification got me real scared

I love how LegalEgal has become the de facto lawyer in the RU-vid cinematic universe.

Only the fanart that turns me in a cat femboy

Something that's interesting, is how Japan deals with it. I only found out about this, cause I was looking for a fan story, and came across a manga someone made, and they had explained how they were able to get away with it, based on Japanese law. They're American by the way. Basically, they were allowed to make the fan manga, on the condition that they followed specific rules, the primary one being: you have to draw everything yourself. Meaning, you can't re-use any pictures/panels from a pre-published book of the series, and you must use your own resources. And, apparently this seems to be fairly popular, as their (japan's) book stores have sections dedicated to both the original works, as well as the fan works. And, honestly, I think this is what we should be doing over here. We need to open things up, and let fans do things like this. However, I'd implement slightly different rules, based on the medium. One being, not to *remake* a game, and of course, follow the above rule of, "the game must have it's own resources". Although, something that would also help is, having a stamp of sorts, that people can toss onto their project, that outright states that it's fan work, and that, if it doesn't have it, the companies have the legal right to halt it as they see fit. But, seriously, the rules *need* to be changed, because there's tons of great people out there, that, honestly, if they were to apply to some of these companies, their work would become incredibly useful. What's a better way to build your portfolio of art, writing, movies, or games, than to make a fan version? It shows passion and dedication, and loads of skill, much of which all these industries are typically looking for from people.

i think fan art is the next level of appreciation

Company : I want cheap advertisement and unpaid labor. Fan artists : Hi. Company : You are leeching of our property, we will take you to court! Everyone : OK, bye. Company : No, wai-

I remember going to anime conventions and seeing people selling posters, stickers, t shirts, and even body pillows of their fan art and all I could think was “wow this is definitely illegal.” It’s really weird how in the modern era how much you come into contact with copyright infringement and how little we think about it.

This is part of why I have so much respect for the people running Archive of our Own. They put in so much time and effort into making sure people can still make and share fanfics and fanart without having to fear that corporations will come scare creators into scilence. Either way imo the world is a better place because people make fan creations and it's truly a shame that it's technically illegal.

Sonic, looking at pictures of his feet: *”Absolutely”*

If someone copyrights a stickman and fanart is made illegal, we're all screwed

Where I am is that we *had* a good system: in it's earliest days, copyright could only last 20 yrs, but be extended to 40 if a good case was presented; But then Disney kept extending the copyright further and further to what we have now- 90 yrs after the death of the artist

"Should Fanart be Illegal?" Me: *Looks at pile of fanart from various fandoms* "uhhhhhh"

Shakespeare had the right idea. "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers."- Henry VI, Part 2, Act IV

"Should fanart be illegal?" Nintendo and fresh TV:YES

This reminds me of a joke Carrie Fisher made at an awards-show many years ago, where she thanks George for charging her fees for every time she sees her likeness in a mirror. I'm not smart enough to discern if this is fundamentally relevant by any string of connection. But it sounds similar, and I found the joke quite funny.

If George Lucas still owned Lucasfilm he would have sent them a packet full of information on what he wanted to see, original files, conception art and a good luck letter

If fanart becomes illegal, then the Jesus fandom is going to suffer greatly

I can't wait for Jesus, David, and Solomon to sue Leonardo, Michelangelo, or El Greco for drawing fanart of their books.

I know this'll probably get buried but, it's really fuckin cool to hear SBN3's voice in this, knowing your history with him and how you were originally inspired by him and then developed your own style beyond that to get your own voice and now hearing his voice in this, especially with what this video is about, is super nice. it's like a little arc that got wrapped up!

im sure in the phone call with the lawyer, the fact that the lawyer was using a really old phone was symbolic of how laws are behind the times, but i find it funny that austin himself is using a flip phone, something noone has used for like a decade. i don't know if this can be called ironic, but it certainly is pretty funny lol

I see A Fox in Space in the thumbnail, and I insta-click. I didn’t expect SBN3 too tho!

imagine a world where ZUN didnt allow fanworks. all those IOSYS remixes, the popular bad apple music video, heck, maybe even those un owen was her or night of nights remixes would all be gone. just a thing i think of constantly.

Tom Scott: "told you so."

Nice try Austin. No one will stop me from making AustinMcConnell x LegalEagle fanart.

I was talking about this just last week! I study game design and design posters for gaming events we host at our university. Whether to include the game characters, or use them in a different pose, or wearing our merch for the events is all troublesome for those of us who just want to organise a tournament for the games we all love.

The main reason I end up checking out new shows/games ect. is because there’s a lot of cool fanart, it shows me it must be good if people are passionate enough to make so much art. It’s basically a super effective and free form of advertising for these IPs

I feel for both sides of the argument. On one hand, making fanart often comes from a genuine expression of appreciation from someone who loves the work. It's tough to have a metaphorical slap to the face when you cannot profit over something you love doing. On the other, I wouldn't want someone to make tons of profit over original content I make, especially since I may earn less for my own work than someone else seemingly mooching off my stuff. It's a really hard toss-up between the interests of fans and the copyright holder. Someone in the comments mentioned how it would be a good idea for both worlds to allow the creation and selling of fanart, as long as there is a certain percentage of funds given to the original copyright holder depending on how transformative the fanart is.

As someone who's working on some fan films with friends its great to hear this talked about. Fans put in so much time and effort into what they do and get shut down so much. And I will say it: I've seen better Red Hood content come from fans than DC or WB. I've seen far greater Hellblazer stuff and The Question stuff as well. I've seen my own friends slave for hours and days on end creating things for the stuff they're passionate about. I cosplay and have friends who cosplay and there's so much that goes into this. And it sucks BALLS that the law holds fans in a creative chokehold. Fans sometimes have better ideas and continuations to stories than the ip owner does. I've seen some of my friends go on for days about expanding stories for X-Men characters who don't have the biggest roles. Its frustrating. Its really fucking frustrating at this point.

Here's an idea: Allow all fanart, but make it so that the fanartists must always disclose that what they're doing is fanart, the same way RU-vidrs have to disclose sponsorships, that way the ip wouldn't really be hurt if no one is mistaking the fanart for the official thing.

"It is illegal to sell fanfiction." Wait, aren't doujins/fanbooks like popular in Japan? They even sell tons of those in huge conventions.

"Should Fan Art Be Illegal?" Me, currently making fan art and intending to start posting more, maybe even open fan commissions in the future as a way to earn money during the pandemic: **sweats**

fandom is the heart and soul of media and its a complete shame that capitalist behemoths can feel good completely strangling their own fans .-. i grew up in fandom spaces, ty for talking abt this

although your videos' subjects are never related to each other and might look random at times, they always fit my interests. you really know your ways on gaining the attention of a person.

I feel like when All of the creators of the original project die then the copyright should be lifted. Company brand names and logos can stay forever since those identify the company. On the flip side, being able to fall back on trusted IP's allow companies to make riskier moves and it could be argued that we actually get stuff we never would have gotten otherwise.

Maybe i'm saying something dumb. But big companies should recognize the effort and talent behind all those fan works. And maybe hire some of the people involved. Rockstar Games recently hired a modder that made GTA V loading a lot shorter... That was cool of them...

This video makes me glad to be a weeb. Fanworks are not just generally permitted, they are instrumental to the culture. The largest convention, Comiket, is almost entirely dedicated to derivative works. There are so many people today who got their start 10-20 years ago making Doujinshi (self published derivative manga), working with Vocaloid (hatsune miku) and Touhou (just a really popular intellectual property I guess). Anime in the west also owes its entire existence to fansubbers who for decades have been arduously translating and subtitling works for the western market.

The system that should be around is one that doesn’t allow corporations to own copyright, but instead assign it to one individual person, preferably the one who was in charge of its creation. No trading of copyright, only licensing. Once they’ve passed away, into the Public Domain it goes.

The RU-vidr you want to consult for a great understanding of Fair Use legislation is Casey Fiesler, she wrote a PHD thesis on Fair Use Copyright law and the legality of Fan Works. She also weighed in on another Fair Use situation that happened on RU-vid a while ago.

Legal Eagle is literally on every RU-vid channel I follow these days

I'm not surprised this would be a discussed topic at one point, ages ago disney had a copyright lawsuit against a couple who made a gravestone for their late son who had a spider man picture on it.

I like how legal eagle has a rotary phone. That makes him look really old 😅😅😅... Or is the law just that old... That was a great collab. I also watch the legal eagle. He is entertaining. I do agree with you however there needs to be a rewrite on this law.

I feel like this is actually a surprisingly untouched topic and should be WAY MORE controversial. Because I think a lot of good-faith artists like the idea of having (in theory) so much control over their private property (which is what it becomes when you've monetised, copyrighted and licensed the thing you've made). For everyone else except the few that own the copyrights, I think the legacy of copyright and patents is actually DEVASTATING and we've most likely been denied some of the best works of art and most important innovations in history because someone couldn't just go ahead and MAKE what they wanted (within every other regulation that keeps people safe of course). I'm definitely a pirate in this respect, as soon as you've released your creation into the neverending abyss that is the internet, you should just kind of accept that it can and will be used and abused, but that's OK? I think a person's position on this topic says a lot more than just what you think about the legality of certain cursed fanfiction, and more what you think about private ownership, money, wealth and libertarianism/anarchism in general.

Child: *draws a stick figure “look mommy, I drawed mickey!” Disney: FBI OPEN UP

Heres the interesting thing Apeiron was given a cease and desist order Compare that to Legends of Pirates Online, a fan reproduction/continuation of Pirates of the Caribbean Online They somehow bought some of the original code to work with, and its still going strong Disney knows about it

I got scare for a moment because I read “Should farts be illegal”

I think an interesting exception to this is the Sonic the Hedgehog Twitter, if you go back some weeks, where they solicit the creation of fanart. This is different because money wasn’t involved, but I find it interesting nonetheless

*"The human brain is the most complex structure in the whole entire universe"* _-Human Brain_

Fox in Space is the best show I have only seen one episode of over the course of 5 years ever.

This is that Happy Birthday song issue with Warner Bros, where they were gonna sue anyone who just sang that song. Like no kidding.

large companies haven't realized that fan artwork increases exposure, exposure leads to curiosity, curiosity leads to searching, searching leads to possible new costumers Minecraft/Undertale/[insert game here] can not be a better example, a game with no marketing what so ever lead to a massive genre thanks to fanwork and fan products

"If your favorite franchise suddenly granted you a free license for derivative works, what would you make?" rule 34 artists: *cracks knuckles and stretches neck*

I try my best to make original characters but sometimes you just gotta draw a Mario. I won't stop.

i think the whole copyright system in general is broken and stifles creativity. Some of the greatest works were remixes and homages to past works. Copyright was created to last for a certain amount of time for as long as the creator of the works to live to profit and then the works go into the Public Domain. Now through lobbying, companies like Disney have extended their copyright far beyond what’s reasonable. It’s disgusting, they use other people’s work to make their work and then stifle other people who do the same. IT NEEDS TO CHANGE

How do you keep making videos relevant to what i'm doing?

Here’s the thing... it literally doesn’t matter if the original content owner thinks there is an infraction it only matters what the judge or jury thinks. Go to court, brush up on the legal process and represent yourself, its cheaper that way. Present your case and appeal by stressing the originality of your work and how much it differs from the inspirational material. This is how it works for music as well. You remix the track you like in order to be different and there isn’t anything the original owner can do... and they know it. Which is why they rarely go to court and almost never succeed when they do. Rachel Platton threw a fit over The Piano Guys doing an instrumental cover for one of her most popular songs and The Piano Guys basically said, “Thanks for the inspiration but this isn’t even the same song... this is an instrumental cover not previously available to the public in any way, tough luck.” And literally nothing came of it because it was original in its arrangement and presentation even if it wasn’t entirely original in composition. The best way to look at the situation (in my experience) is with an analogy. How many brands of barbecue sauce are there in the world? How many use different ingredients? How many use the same ingredients but in a different ratio? How many lawsuits between brands do you see? Almost none. Unless a carbon copy is made there is literally nothing anyone (no matter how big the company) can do. And they know it! (Don’t forget that.) Donations can’t be considered payment because there is no price tag on the material and no payment is required for its use. It helps if you have a wide variety of content because the donations are non specific to available material and unless the prosecution can prove beyond reasonable doubt that any and every donation was made in exclusive connection to the elements that they hold intellectual rights to, they don’t have a leg to stand on. I speak from experience, albeit brief and limited. (It is expensive to hire a prosecutor and the potential gain is almost nonexistent for most big companies to bother with. Your “infraction” is more than likely a mere bug on the metaphorical windshield.) Some things to remember: Try to make your work as unique and original as possible in every way. (Design, name, color pallet, etc. no one said “knockoffs” or “spinoffs” had to be cheap, just try to be creative!) Understand that it is the right of the opposition to appeal to a court and present their case. Try to reach out and cooperate with the group making a claim prior to court involvement. This will dramatically increase your odds of favor in the eyes of a judge or jury should things actually go to court. (An attempt to resolve a conflict before wasting the court’s time is well liked by officials in most instances.) Look up cases on RU-vid where the “violator” won the case against the big company. It happens way more often than you would think and there are many examples. (Often, the company gets gutted afterward for wasting the court’s time. 😆)

If I had a franchise, I will be like George Lucas and make an EU. I couldn't wait to see what people would make. I'm going to put that stuff into my newsletter. Fan art is the best part and it's great to see people being passionate about your creation.

It's awesome that you're not trying to argue one way or another here. You're using your postion as someone with a lot of subscribers to draw attention to an issue that's becoming more and more relevant as time goes on, and that's just great of you to do as a content creator. Props.

I love the work that some of these people do, but they're kind of insane? I just can't imagine starting such a massive project knowing full well the entire time that it's likely to get shutdown by the rights holder long before it ever gets finished. And it keeps happening? Which only makes the other people that are still doing it all the more baffling to me. Either get the blessing of the owners like Starry Night (Cyan) and Black Mesa (Valve), or file off the serial numbers and make your own similar, but legally distinct, thing, like Temtem or Stardew Valley. I sympathize, and the current state of copyright is basically ruined, but the more I see news of takedowns the more it feels like watching someone walk into a field of rakes.

The art that comes from your mind and hands is your own. Otherwise there really is no freedom of speech.

I was so sad about that one Arrowverse game that the creator spent years on only to have it receive a cease and desist. : ( If I recall correctly, he got the notice the day before it was supposed to come out.

I remember when youtube first came out. The most popular video series was Chad Vader, a parody of Darth Vader that worked in a supermarket in Wisconsin. Some of the only quality stuff on RU-vid in the first year, were either proto-vloggers, gameplay videos and fan films.

A differentiation needs to be made between "copyright law" and "trademark law" - copyright is about the content of the work, essentially trying to control and police an idea. Trademarks are about identifying the work as coming from the original creator. Violating the latter is essentially fraud, violating the first isn't.