From: Tony Sanfilippo <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 12 May 2017 10:05:23 -0400

Like the author of that piece, I too work in comic studies, but on the
publisher side as a university press. I thought this was a pretty good
piece and I shared it with our editors, including the editor of our
comic studies journal and comic studies book series, Jared Gardner.

Comic studies is fraught with risk primarily because of the rights
holders of some of the most important materials. DC, Marvel, and
Disney play a huge role in comic studies and they all have a
reputation for being litigious. But we simply couldn't do the work we
do if we didn't apply fair use. Context is everything, and we do a lot
of talking internally about fair use applications with our authors and
editors. Full page from a comic book or graphic novel is probably too
much, but a panel should be fine. But from a daily newspaper strip, a
panel might be too much. How many panels in that strip? Is it a
weekday comic or the Sunday comic? But even those rules aren't fast
and hard. If the scholar is commenting on the layout in a way that
needs to be seen, we might include more than just a panel and still
accept a fair use application.

I'm very lucky to be working with both Jared and at Ohio State. We
have the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library here, and between Jared and the
curators there, they have a relationship with an incredible number of
artists, publishers, and syndicates. When we do decide we need
permission they are a great resource.

It's an interesting field to work in and has something of an infamous
history when it comes to rights management. Some of the most famous
characters in the comics world were created as works for hire, thus
the geniuses who conceived of and drew the work seldom saw any
significant reward, with many from the golden age of comics dying in
poverty. As a result, artists are much more aware of their rights and
outside of the big corporate comic universes, artists demand and
receive contracts that limit the publishers' rights unlike anywhere
else I've seen in publishing.

I'm working on a co-publication with one of the leaders in modern
comics publishing, and because of that I saw one of their boilerplates
for the artists they publish, and it was one of the most publisher
restrictive agreements I've ever seen. The publisher is given print
and ebook rights, but not exclusively because the artist can include
the work in any other venue they wish. Comic artists have learned the
lessons of the past and are incredibly aggressive in their
negotiations with publishers and these very restrictive rights
transfers are becoming a common practice. When we do need permission
for contemporary comics, the rightsholder is the artist a majority of
the time, and a friend of either Jared or the Billy Ireland curators.

One final story I'll share that I found very interesting. Jared was
working with the rightsholder of one of the major comics universes and
there was a particular superhero image he was trying to get permission
for, and he had a long time contact there who he said used to be quite
cooperative, but this one property was under unrelated litigation over
ownership and suddenly all permissions for art using this character
were being denied. Jared called his contact and asked what was up, and
his contact told him, Look, we're not going to be giving permission
for the use of that character anytime in the foreseeable future, but I
would certainly hope that isn't the only factor you consider when
deciding what can be used in a scholarly work. At the time, Jared was
working with a commercial press and that wasn't good enough for them
to go ahead and include it. I'm not sure I would have come to the same
decision.

All the best,
Tony



Tony Sanfilippo, Director
Ohio State University Press
180 Pressey Hall
1070 Carmack Road
Columbus, OH 43210-1002
ohiostatepress.org
(614) 292-7818

On Thu, May 11, 2017 at 11:19 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> From: Winston Tabb <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Fri, 12 May 2017 01:32:31 +0000
>
> Jim:  In general, you're correct. But luckily some institutions‎ are
> more inclined to interpret "fair" in the rational, balancing manner in
> which I think it was intended
>
>
> Original Message
> From: "Jim O'Donnell" <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Thu, 11 May 2017 06:24:41 -0700
> Subject: "Fair Use Too Often Goes Unused"
> From today's Chronicle of Higher Education and, appropriate to the
> topic, not behind their paywall:
>
> http://www.chronicle.com/article/Fair-Use-Too-Often-Goes-Unused/240033?cid=wcontentgrid_hp_2
>
> The people for whom fair use is perhaps most intended -- educational
> users -- also tend to inhabit extremely conservative institutions when
> it comes to legal issues and can get easily dissuaded from exercise of
> rights by even a very thin chance of legal action.  Content providers,
> on the other hand, are rarely shy about claiming all their rights and
> more.  This piece focuses on "quotation" of visual material (stills
> from a motion picture, etc.), but the argument has general validity.
>
> Jim O'Donnell
> Arizona State University