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