Re-thinking copyright

[Rakuen Growlithe]

I came into the furry fandom through fanfiction. I wrote fanfiction and fanfiction is great. There's some really cool stuff made by fans and it's not just stories. Music, art, stories, comics, videos, games the list goes on. But not everyone is a fan of fan-made products. There are some authors who don't like fanfiction done about their stories. There are even furry artists who call it stealing when people use their images as avatars for rps or something. And there is often talk about copyright.

For me, things were fairly simple. I enjoyed fan-made work but I also recognised that people might sometimes want to protect their brand and don't want others profiting off their work and ideas. So I said, fan art is fine, fan games are fine but, it's not fine when you start making a profit using other people's ideas. Commissions are special usually because you aren't buying, for argument's sake, a pokemon picture in the same way you would go to the shop and buy a poster. When you pay for a commission you are buying an artist's skill, what you then put that to is a different question. But then I was reading about the doujinshi scene in Japan.

For those who are not aware, doujinshi are basically small comics often drawn by fans of a copyrighted show and sold for profit. What's interesting is that they have no problem with it in Japan, for now. I highly recommend you read this article because it's made me rethink my stance a bit: Japan’s Doujinshi Culture Of Creativity Through Theft. There are a few reasons why people don't do anything about it in Japan but some that are particularly interesting is that companies respect those artists. That's the way they started and it's where they look for new talent. In addition, the money thing is not a big deal. Most people producing doujinshi are not selling large numbers and not making a huge profit on it but they are providing free advertising and building a fan community. A strong fan community is why My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic has kept going as long as it has while many other shows don't last even half as long.

Copyright laws need to change. That much is obvious. There are too many videos on Youtube that are silenced for having copyrighted songs or that are only viewable in certain locations. These things happen automatically without regard to why copyrighted materials are being used. This can lead to situations like Warner Brothers reporting it's own official sites as illegaland asking for them to be blocked. It gets worse when it prevents people from modifying software or hardware that they own, for example making it illegal to fix your own tractor, or preventing people from creating unofficial games servers after the official ones shut down. Looking at what was happening in Japan it might be that we need to rethink copyright far more radically.

[Ventus Fall]

I totally agree if there are people who -even if they make money off of things-, make sure credit still goes to the original designer (preferably this is done with their permission). However, in a lot of cases people just claim things as their own, that it's original, when it's clearly not. Going even as so far to steal personal characters, which might be highly detailed and worked out. That last point I can't agree with.
There is a thing such as Creative Commons. There are various versions of it, and every artist can specify which CC is applicable to each separate piece or character. This is a much nicer concept and people are trying to find more ground for this as well. My wording is once again a bit off here, but... I hope you get the gist of it.

There is a 'Where is the fair use' thing going on, as even if people who produce content, who abide fully by YouTube's rules and regulations, still get their videos taken down (because of the automatic system), lose monetisation, etc. It's frustrating.
So this is even when no copyright material is used whatsoever.
It's ironic, the artists and film makers fled to Hollywood to escape similar circumstances, yet they are now the ones who are doing these things on YouTube by having other channels and companies work for them to just strike and report every channel and video they can find. And since the system of YouTube is silly, and too much of an automatic mess, you can't ever have the situation dealt properly in most cases.

[Rakuen Growlithe]

Most of those arguments seem very focused on the specific furry aspect, not on the broader topic. Personal characters is a miniscule part of what copyright is about and is mostly limited to just the furry fandom. It's not an issue with Hollywood, for example. Credit is also very important but if we're talking about fan work then the people consuming it are already fans and know where the original work comes from. In addition, for mainstream media there is a huge size disparity between the actual franchises and fan work. So everyone already knows who is responsible for Star Wars or Harry Potter and so crediting there is fairly pointless. It's like when citing sources for academic material, you don't need to cite a source for what is common/textbook knowledge, only the new stuff that people are unlikely to know.