The cultural economy of fanwork in Japan: dōjinshi exchange as a hybrid economy of open source cultural goods
- ️https://kuleuven.academia.edu/NeleNoppe
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Media International Australia, 2005
Fan-based or third party content creation has assumed an integral place in the multi-million dollar computer games industry. The emerging production ecology that involves new kinds of distributed organisations and ad hoc networks epitomises the ‘drift of value’ from producer to consumer and allows us to understand how user-led innovation influences the creative industries. But the ability to control intellectual property rights in content production is critical to the power structures and social dynamic that are being created in this space. Trainz, a train simulation game released by Brisbane developer Auran, which relies heavily on fan-created content for its success, is used as a case study. The licence agreements between Auran and the fan creators are analysed in order to understand how the balance between the commercial and non-commercial is achieved and how the tension between open networks of collaboration and closed structures of commercial competitive environments are negoti...
Notes on Fan Organization – Organization of Consumption in Copyrighted Economy (218-235)
The beginning of this century has witnessed a growing interest in the immaterial resources of organization, and more particularly, in immaterial property as a source of future wealth, employment, and prosperity in economy. The discussion on creative economy has moved creative works from the fringes of economy – from the fields of cultural practices and media audiences – to one of the main areas of theorizing knowledge work, organising activity, and innovation. The user generated innovation of not only the content, but the organization of the production and the means for it, offers interesting points of departures to these developments. It also proposes challenges to the policy discussion on cultural and media production, the primacy of formal and professional organization for innovation on creative content and work, and the role of copyright and related rights ownership to the creation of wealth in the creative economy of the future.
Video-sharing sites like YouTube and streaming services like Amazon Prime Video and Netflix, along with unlawful platforms such as Anitube, are environments of consumption enabled by increasing transnational consumption that are pushing for transformations in the Japanese animation industry. Among these platforms, the Kadokawa Dwango Corporation is known to rely on the integration of consumers' practices and the needs of the animation industry in a changing and challenging era of transnational content flows. In this paper, I focus on the Kadokawa Dwango Corporation, a major player in the contemporary media mix, and its pushing forward of the creation of an environment that integrates two different stances on cultural content: one which represents the industry's needs regarding cultural content as intellectual property, and another that represents consumers' practices and which regards content as a common or free resource for enabling participation in digital networks. I argue that rather than the production of content, it is the production of value through the management of fictional worlds and user's participation in media platforms that lies at the core of the Kadokawa Dwango Corporation's self-proclaimed 'ecosystem'. This case represents the transformations in the Japanese content industry to survive the increasing transnationalisation of consumption and production.
"This article’s argument is twofold: The first part of the paper argues that within a social network market structure fans act as agents and mostly inadvertent promoters of cultural products helping corporate producers achieve their marketing goals and reaching their target groups. The second part of this paper goes on to illustrate that in creating supposedly derivative work certain active fans develop their very own style and artistic features. They produce and distribute innovative media content and end up contributing to the very culture in which the originally participated as consumers." (178) Please note: (Page numbers of uploaded document may be slightly different from the final print version). Einwächter, Sophie G.: Fantastic Fan Marketing - Fantasy Fan Online-Communities and Conventions as Markets of Cultural Goods, in: Hartwig, Marcel, Evelyne Keitel & Gunter Süß (Hg.): Media Economies. Perspectives on American Cultural Practices, Trier: wvt - Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2014, S. 179-198.
American Journal of Comparative Law, 2014
Recently the Japanese government revised its copyright law, and one of the major changes in it is that illegal downloaders in Japan now face up to two years’ imprisonment or a fine of ¥2 million (approximately US$19,265), or a combination of the two for downloading certain kinds of copyrighted content. These momentous changes have triggered backlashes around the country from below, as might be expected. Interestingly, the industrial practices of Japanese content industries have developed certain domestic and foreign copyright-related strategies that tolerate some alleged copyright-infringing fan activities. This paper argues that, although some of these strategies are incompatible with the current copyright law regime, and specifically the aforementioned revision to Japan’s copyright law, they have unconsciously created unexpected positive outcomes. This paper uses an integrative approach that combines market analysis and comparative law methods — to examine these copyright strategies, and proposes an alternative solution to deal with the copyright problems raised by fan-based activities.
Global Media and China, 2016
The media and entertainment industry in China is witnessing the changing nature of its relationships between fans and the artists/studios they follow. Fans, once merely passive recipients of marketing campaigns, are now shifting from sharing their original work (fan art, fan vids, fan fics) as active members of fan communities, and participants within the "gift economy", to being content experts leveraged as co-creators by studios seeking to ensure the success of productions before they are released into the marketplace. China's media and entertainment companies are beginning to embrace the creative powers of their fans, and are seeking new ways to develop, invest in, and nurture their fan community towards the co-creation of products, especially with high level "super fans", surpassing the mere driving of purchases through lifestyle affinity. In this paper we define and discuss elements of Chinese "fans", their evolving relationship with artists and studios, and their impact on the Chinese media and entertainment industry. This includes a description of fan "levels", an adaptation of the ARPU (average revenue per unit) used to measure fan value, and a review of social media platforms that provide a technological base for company/ fan interaction. We share examples from China's music, film, and television industries based on interviews with industry practitioners, and offer some insights on how companies can benefit from this collaborative product development practice. In conclusion, we draw parallels between the direction of the fan-studio collaboration process with the rapidly expanding innovation process known as "design thinking", where companies incorporate feedback from side-by-side collaboration with customers and expert users during the product development process.