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NEWS: Otakon Enforces Copyright at Artists' Alley


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DJ Ranma S



Joined: 21 Nov 2005
Posts: 12
PostPosted: Mon Jan 30, 2006 2:31 am Reply with quote
LaLuna.RuniGustav wrote:
DJ Ranma S wrote:
Well in a way I don't think this is right, but Otakon is within their rights. I mean they can be held liable bnecause some companies might say that Artist's Alley is selling bootlegs or something.

Artist's Alley is a place for original works right? I guess over time, the community has been borrowing anime characters to sell works. I'd suppose that would fall under the Fair Use Law, but I might be wrong on that.

Last year a friend of mine was forced to stop selling FMA hats due to pressure from Funimation put on the con staff (or so I'm told). In the end, Vic (VA for Ed) heard of this and put in a custom order from her, which is cool. I suspect that was done because FUNi and the dealer's selling FMA merchandise was losing sales. Rolling Eyes

I suspect this is happening because of a drop in sales from the dealer's room. I mean you have the Dealer's Room and Artist's Alley selling anime merchandise, and I suppose getting it from Artist's Alley is more meaningful. I went to AZ last year and I barely spent money in the Dealer's Room, but I did buy a lot of merchandise from Artist's Alley such as NARUTO and Final Fantasy artwork.


if FUNi was smart.... which I hope they are...... they should have worked on a deal so that your friend worked for them on making the Hats. Razz If their so threatened by certian fan merchendise. It's one thing to make something that's being put out by a company (like T-shirts of characters) but when all your hats are Fruits Basket and not FMA hats..... well....... It's time to start expanding a bit. IMHO.


Y'know it's a matter of time before Viz goes after the people that make and sell forehead protectors in Artist's Alley...
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Insane E



Joined: 13 Jun 2005
Posts: 87
Location: Sweden
PostPosted: Mon Jan 30, 2006 2:50 am Reply with quote
hikaru004 wrote:
This isn't Japan. They have really no protection here if someone wants to prosecute.


Now I must ask, can you see any publisher taking Otakon to court over sales of fanart?
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Insane E



Joined: 13 Jun 2005
Posts: 87
Location: Sweden
PostPosted: Mon Jan 30, 2006 3:07 am Reply with quote
Haven't seen this posted before, sorry if it has.

Would love to see Otakons definition of what fanart is if they draft a policy of this type. Seing how it will be the key factor when it comes to enforce such a policy.

On a side note stuff like this makes me all fuzzy inside, almost the same way this does.
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Carl Horn



Joined: 09 Jun 2005
Posts: 90
PostPosted: Mon Jan 30, 2006 4:24 am Reply with quote
I have always received a positive impression of Otakon in the past, and it is my hope that the report of a ban on fan art at the 2006 event is untrue. It is difficult to imagine any single gesture a convention could make that would be more antithetical to the spirit of anime and manga fans.

Doujinshi, a term which usually refers to a printed manga in booklet form, but which can mean any variety of goods, is the heart and soul of fan activity in Japan. Because of the tremendous size of the scene, a great many doujinshi in Japan are original works. However, the majority are parodies, tributes, and side stories of pre-existing manga, anime, and video games—in a word, fan art.

Some sense of the size of the fan art scene can be given by the fact Japan's largest doujinshi convention, Comic Market, or Comiket, has more fan artists' tables than Otakon has attendees. And Comiket's attendees number in excess of 350,000—more than every U.S. anime and manga con put together. Still more amazing, this event happens not once but twice a year, and Comiket is only the largest such event. There are doujinshi conventions somewhere in Japan every weekend. The last decade has seen the scene expand beyond conventions to chain stores that either specialize in doujinshi, like Toranoana, or strongly represent it, such as Mandarake.

Given such numbers, it will be obvious that fan art is hardly an underground phenomenon in Japan, living in fear of creators and license holders—for years, Toranoana has run an ad on the back page of SHONEN ACE magazine, home of the manga EVANGELION, SGT. FROG, EUREKA SEVEN, BLOOD+, and GIRLS BRAVO. In fact, while there have been occasional instances where a company has sought to suppress fan art, they are the exception. Major manga publishers and anime studios themselves exhibit in a special area of Comiket, in the midst of hundreds of thousands of fans buying and selling doujinshi featuring their characters.

From a professional standpoint, these companies might look down upon fan art as amateurish—which of course, by definition, it is. But by "amateurish," they refer not necessarily to skill, but to context; these artists aren't working within the industry. By the same token, doujinshi are a tremendous scouting camp for promising young artists who might be asked to assist on a professional project, or even undertake an original one. Rikdo Koshi and Yasuhiro Nightow are two of only many manga-ka who jumped directly from doujinshi to professional work.

Even for the majority of fan artists who lack either the inclination or the talent to become professional, doujinshi serve another purpose from the perspective of the industry—they are a gauge of fan enthusiasm for a title. This has significance for everything from independent productions looking to see if fans have picked up on their work, to SHONEN JUMP, Japan's largest manga magazine, for whose fan-art publications entire sections of Comiket are reserved.

Finally, of course, doujinshi are most significant for what they represent for their own sake, to the fans themselves—the tremendous love, fun, and enthusiasm for the visual culture of anime, manga, and games. Fan art is properly recognized as a sign of health for these media in general. From the perspective of the ailing American comics industry, one cannot help but note that Comiket, a fan convention, is several times the size of the San Diego Comic-Con, the U.S.'s largest pro convention. There is no equivalent of Comic-Con in Japan, as manga, a true mass medium, is far too big to be symbolized by any single event—it would be as absurd as a convention in the U.S. for "Americans Who Like To Watch TV."

Previous Otakon guests who have produced and contributed to doujinshi include Yasuhiro Nightow, Tsukasa Kotobuki, Masaomi Kanzaki, Hiroshi Aro, Yoshitoshi ABe, Teruo Kakuta, Hiroyuki Kitakubo, Ippongi Bang, Toshio Okada, Adam Warren, Ben Dunn, Fred Perry, Robert de Jesus, and Toren Smith. Three of the Americans I name became involved with some of the very same doujinshi that Otakon's Japanese guests contributed to. Fan art has been not only a form of expression shared both by Japanese and Westerners, but has proved an immediate, common communication between them.

Many of the manga artists that Dark Horse Comics publishes have themselves been active in doujinshi. In addition to names from among the list above, they include Kohta Hirano (HELLSING), Kenji Tsuruta (SPIRIT OF WONDER), Hiroyuki Utatane (SERAPHIC FEATHER), Hisao Tamaki (STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE), Johji Manabe (DRAKUUN), Masamune Shirow (GHOST IN THE SHELL), Hiroaki Samura (BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL), and, most especially, Kenichi Sonoda (GUNSMITH CATS, CANNON GOD EXAXXION), whose doujinshi CHOSEN AME—now known as MEGATON PUNCH—remains one of Japan's best. The list serves as a reminder that fan art is not something necessarily left behind when an artist turns pro—many professional artists still make time for it.

I myself have been a fan artist, and have helped to publish and sell a fan art doujinshi at U.S. conventions. Of course it is certainly possible I might have received negative consequences from it. But in fact it didn't occur, and again, not because I whisked it under the table when U.S. representatives of the license holders approached—in fact, two of them were kind enough to buy it, and not for a sting. You learn something about the individuals who make up that faceless term "the industry" that way—what kind of people they are. You are reminded that, like those professional manga and anime artists, they themselves began as fans, and still are.

I certainly don't speak for ADV Films or their policies, but I would list them as a foremost example. ADV has always been a company which has understood the role fan expression has played and continues to play in both Japan and America. This isn't a mere indulgence; a policy of toleration—it has been the very key to their success. Conventional U.S. media companies remain largely naive about anime and manga to this day. I've observed astonishing ignorance of it from entertainment giants who are "thinking about getting into that Japanese stuff."

True business sophistication in this field comes from knowing that it has not grown by being a top-down affair—the model where fans are given guidelines for authorized thoughts and activities. It hasn't in Japan, and, owing to the very space between Japan and the West, it hasn't been so here, either. ADV has built their very considerable share of the industry within that space, which represents spontaneity, freedom, and opportunity for growth. It would be an exaggeration to say the U.S. anime and manga industries are a creation of its fans, but there is a great deal of truth to it, and again, the contrast with conventional media companies—obsessed with control over and above creativity, grasping tighter in reflex as the things they understand start to slip away—is remarkable.

A closing irony is that fan art is hardly an out-of-control menace at U.S. anime and manga cons—in fact, as a percentage of total offerings it is barely noticeable. Kenichi Sonoda, as a guest of honor at Anime Central, famously asked where all the American doujinshi are. You may see some sketches in a portfolio, or maybe a pack of drawings for sale, but very rarely fan doujinshi in the Japanese sense—even the scene for original doujinshi here is scanty compared to Japan, although there are people making a real effort—certainly more than me. If anything, we need more fan art in the West, not its banning or discouragement.

The first Otakon I attended was in 1995, a surreal event that seemed to rise out of the Pennsylvania countryside. On the eve of EVANGELION's premiere, Gainax founder Toshio Okada came there as a guest—because, he said, the convention had the guts to name itself for otaku. Okada was known to fans here through his alter ego, Tanaka, in OTAKU NO VIDEO—in which, of course, he tries to otakuize his friend Kubo by pushing doujinshi on him.

The last time I went to Otakon, it had, of course, been in Baltimore for many years. It had become so much bigger—yet it was my honest opinion that somehow the staff, even under its tremendous organizational challenges, the unbelievable work that goes into putting on the event, had managed to remember who they were—to greet the attendees not as customers, but as friends and comrades—as fellow fans. Fan art is only a perspective, and it is having a perspective that makes a fan a fan, instead of nothing more than a consumer. This isn't idealism; this is how we have got this far.

Carl Gustav Horn
Manga Editor
Dark Horse Comics
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Colonel Wolfe



Joined: 05 Aug 2004
Posts: 370
PostPosted: Mon Jan 30, 2006 4:33 am Reply with quote
Otakon is taking a huge risk with this gambit of theirs. For one thing, they are well within their rights for preventing the sale of bootleg anime but works of art? FanArt, and this could very well cover Doujinshi (which is Fan-Created) is not considered licensed material, isn't covered under the normal rules unless they are being produced by a large company such as Dark Horse, Marvel and DC Comics.

Otakon is taking it upon themselves to police their own events at their own discretion. If I create a piece of FanArt, I have the right to sell it, it's a right of Fair Use and since they are not mass produced, no license is needed to sell it.

I expect that Otakon's future as an anime con will be in air air because many deaslers sell this material, in an effort to try and make a little money. FanArt isn't generally mass-produced and if someone created a beautiful painting of like a character from Bleach or Ah! My Goddess they would be prevented from selling that because of their policy.

I think Otakon officials are taking the hardline approach to this issue and it should be up to the individual companies who hold those licenses to be taking this approach not the convention organizers themselves. Otakon seems to always be creating problems with their ignorant policy changes ...

Otakon is turning out to be one of the worst Anime COns that I've heard about in recent years ranging from limiting the attendance to their cons to their ignorant policies.
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Jonathan Harmon



Joined: 30 Jan 2006
Posts: 4
PostPosted: Mon Jan 30, 2006 5:28 am Reply with quote
Colonel Wolfe wrote:
Otakon is taking a huge risk with this gambit of theirs. For one thing, they are well within their rights for preventing the sale of bootleg anime but works of art? FanArt, and this could very well cover Doujinshi (which is Fan-Created) is not considered licensed material, isn't covered under the normal rules unless they are being produced by a large company such as Dark Horse, Marvel and DC Comics.

Otakon is taking it upon themselves to police their own events at their own discretion. If I create a piece of FanArt, I have the right to sell it, it's a right of Fair Use and since they are not mass produced, no license is needed to sell it.

I expect that Otakon's future as an anime con will be in air air because many deaslers sell this material, in an effort to try and make a little money. FanArt isn't generally mass-produced and if someone created a beautiful painting of like a character from Bleach or Ah! My Goddess they would be prevented from selling that because of their policy.

I think Otakon officials are taking the hardline approach to this issue and it should be up to the individual companies who hold those licenses to be taking this approach not the convention organizers themselves. Otakon seems to always be creating problems with their ignorant policy changes ...

Otakon is turning out to be one of the worst Anime COns that I've heard about in recent years ranging from limiting the attendance to their cons to their ignorant policies.


Carl's previous post was quite eloquent in its defense of fan art and doujinshi as one of the cornerstones of anime and manga fandom, and it touched upon the concerns that many of us feel with potential restrictions upon the sale of unlicensed fan-created artwork. In contrast, the statements contained within the above-quoted post are not, I feel, at all fair and evince a severely limited perspective of the situation.

I will not argue with the poor dissection of United States laws regarding copyright protection and Fair Use, because the policy as posted to the Otakon BBS was unfortunately released without review by the appropriate corporate officers and is currently under review. It is hard, however, not to take umbrage at the assumption that this announcement was a "gambit" of some sort. To what end would Otakon do this, may I ask?

The issue of the attendance cap, on the other hand, is something that I do feel the need upon which to comment at some length. Our attendance cap was instituted in 2005 because the Baltimore Convention Center informed us that we had reached and even exceeded the fire code limits of the facility at several times during our 2004 event, even with a large concert held off-site at the 1st Mariner Arena during our peak hours on Saturday. We have managed to finesse some changes in our layouts and space usage patterns for 2006 and there should be some changes to the cap in the future, but the cold, hard reality of the situation is that we are in severe risk of having the Baltimore Fire Department shut down Otakon if we experience the over-crowding that was experienced at times during the 2004 event.

Moreover, Otakon's continually rising attendance from 2003 through 2005 had substantially out-stripped our ability to increase our staff rolls, and the planning staff determined in early 2005 that logistically our staff numbers could not support attendance much beyond our eventual cap of 22,000 members. Even if the Baltimore Convention Center and the Office of the Fire Marshall had not been so insistent about limiting attendance, a cap would likely have been deemed necessary on the grounds of quality of experience. We'd rather put on an enjoyable event for a slightly limited number of members that disappoint all by sacrificing quality in the name of unlimited access, because the drop in event quality and security was potentially monumental if attendance had significantly topped 22,000.

We appreciate your concerns, as well as that of all the others who've been commenting on the ANN boards, but please understand that from the outside it is not always possible to get a clear picture of the situation. The staff of Otakon - like you, like Carl even - are all fans, and we take actions that we feel from an experienced, legally astute, and fiscally conscious perspective best serve the interests of our membership as a whole. I would never be so rash as to claim that we do not make occasional mis-steps, but we do usually have the weight of experience and specialised expertise on our side.

Jonathan Harmon

Relations Section Head
OTAKON 2006
T: (919) 622-8413
F: (919) 962-0722
E: [email protected]
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Zrana



Joined: 30 Jan 2006
Posts: 48
PostPosted: Mon Jan 30, 2006 6:05 am Reply with quote
I just wanted to point out the COPYRIGHT when it comes to images is teh ACTUAL PARTICULAR IMAGE. Fanart that doesn't COPY or TRACE other existing images isn't Copyright infringement. It's trademark infringement. (And I don't know much about that, I'll admit it.)

Meaning--the artist still owns teh ORIGINAL ART. (As long as it's Orignal, even if it borrows characters from elsewhere.)

If the con means to crack down on COPIED ART, then I'm all for it. But unless companies say "NO! They can't sell blah blah blah for which WE own teh Copyright and trademarks for!" then the con is treading on dangerous grounds with the fanbase for forbidding all fanart.

My interpretation is the rule is more about traced/copied kind of fanart--I've seen people selling stuff like this, and it always irks me when I see it.

Hopefully my interpretation is what they MEANT in the mistakenly released not finalized announcement. But many don't know the difference between copyright (exact image/sound) and trademark (likeness, names).

(I'm a self declared ditz, so I MIGHT have had my information wrong.)
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Colonel Wolfe



Joined: 05 Aug 2004
Posts: 370
PostPosted: Mon Jan 30, 2006 6:30 am Reply with quote
I can see your point, Jonathan. Thanks for addressing the issue with the attendance cap, which clarifies things a little better. I think the problem with Otakon is that there are too many rules and too many policy changes to result in anything that could be considered a true anime event.

Without goiong into detail to explain what exactly Otakoon will be looking to at preventing unlicensed material from being sold, this would include such as the following:

Bootleg DVD's
Bootleg CD's
Translated Manga (created by translation groups)
Anime FanSubs
Anime/Manga material professional produced as identified by Anime Bootleg FAQ's available online

I very seriously doubt FanArt or Doujinshi crosses that line and therein lies the problem. Convention Organizers are too concerned with what may happen instead of looking at ways to finetune their policies. Just outright banning the sale of FanArt is a slap in the face of anime and manga fans who create their own renditions of popular anime and manga titles. Carl Horn stated a good point and so did Jonathan and I think the new policy that Otakon is putting into effect only serves to condemn anime fans from offering fanart for sale.

This would even fall in the line as if someone purchased the original manga art from a manga series and tried to sell it. While they would have the right to own the work they would not have the right to sell the work at Otakon because it would fall into their line as copyrighted material and they (the booth owners) wouldn't have the right to sell the artwork.

I do respect the organizers of this years Otakon their efforts to try and put a stop to the selling of bootleg material but they don't have the right to say that FanArt woould be banned for sale and then put a disclaimer that parody would be on a case by case basis? This falls in the same line as FanArt as well.

I know I was planning on attending Otakon this year because it sounded interesting but I've changed my mind after reading their recent policy chasing. I'll probably think about attending Anime Boston instead.
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orobouros



Joined: 28 Oct 2003
Posts: 14
PostPosted: Mon Jan 30, 2006 7:35 am Reply with quote
It sounds silly to me. How do they expect to enforce such a rule?

1) Not everybody knows every character. The well-known may get axed, but who's going to know the difference between on original character and Marrianne Louvre from the 1982 show Star Musketeer Bismarck?

2) How is Otakon to justifyably claim something is or is not either original work or parody? What if somebody creates an orange-clad ninja called Narootu? Or a wolf-ish samurai Ino Yashu? It was my understanding that all such fanart was considered parody. If not, where does one draw the line?

While it's probably a good policy on paper (however it turns out), I can only see difficulty in enforcing it.
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cjovalle



Joined: 17 Feb 2004
Posts: 31
PostPosted: Mon Jan 30, 2006 8:21 am Reply with quote
Zrana wrote:
I just wanted to point out the COPYRIGHT when it comes to images is teh ACTUAL PARTICULAR IMAGE. Fanart that doesn't COPY or TRACE other existing images isn't Copyright infringement. It's trademark infringement. (And I don't know much about that, I'll admit it.)

Meaning--the artist still owns teh ORIGINAL ART. (As long as it's Orignal, even if it borrows characters from elsewhere.)

If the con means to crack down on COPIED ART, then I'm all for it. But unless companies say "NO! They can't sell blah blah blah for which WE own teh Copyright and trademarks for!" then the con is treading on dangerous grounds with the fanbase for forbidding all fanart.

My interpretation is the rule is more about traced/copied kind of fanart--I've seen people selling stuff like this, and it always irks me when I see it.

Hopefully my interpretation is what they MEANT in the mistakenly released not finalized announcement. But many don't know the difference between copyright (exact image/sound) and trademark (likeness, names).

(I'm a self declared ditz, so I MIGHT have had my information wrong.)


I'm afraid that's not correct. ^^; There are a couple of things to note when it comes to copyright and trademark.

Copyright is comprised of several exclusive rights which come with exemptions to those rights. Copyright does protect original and exact expression once it's expressed in tangible form. However, copyright also covers derivative works- works based on already existing works. There doesn't need to be any tracing involved- something based on the character is a derivative work. (It gets a little more complicated with characters and expression of "types" of characters, though.) The creation of the derivative work might be a copyright infringement (assuming one of the exemptions isn't involved).

Technically, if a work is a derivative work, and the work was not authorized by the copyright holder, the artist of the derivative work does not have copyright in that derivative work (again, unless an exemption comes into play). Because that work was an infringement itself, anyone who copies that derivative work would still be infringing the rights of the original copyright holder. If the copyright holder sues the creator of the derivative work, the courts may very well grant copyright of the derivative work to the copyright holder.

At any point that there is customer confusion, or when an unauthorized good can be mistaken or substituted for an authorized good- you might have a problem with copyright (weakens possible exemptions) and more often trademark.
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cjovalle



Joined: 17 Feb 2004
Posts: 31
PostPosted: Mon Jan 30, 2006 8:35 am Reply with quote
orobouros wrote:
It sounds silly to me. How do they expect to enforce such a rule?

1) Not everybody knows every character. The well-known may get axed, but who's going to know the difference between on original character and Marrianne Louvre from the 1982 show Star Musketeer Bismarck?


I think they're concerned about obvious infringement. They probably want to practice due diligence for liability concerns.

Quote:
2) How is Otakon to justifyably claim something is or is not either original work or parody? What if somebody creates an orange-clad ninja called Narootu? Or a wolf-ish samurai Ino Yashu? It was my understanding that all such fanart was considered parody. If not, where does one draw the line?

While it's probably a good policy on paper (however it turns out), I can only see difficulty in enforcing it.


More difficult. Those examples you gave are very likely not parody. In the legal sense, parody comments or criticizes the work that is being critized. (Which is confusing, because in literature that's usually referred to as satire, which means something else entirely in the legal tradition. Razz) Those probably wouldn't be considered parody. Because parody is a form of fair use, no one can say with 100% certainty if a use is or is not parody until that actual case comes to court. What they can do is get legal counsel and create a policy that shows that they are using due diligence and use their best judgment whether or not a work is a parody.
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jmays
ANN Associate Editor


Joined: 29 Jul 2002
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Location: St. Louis, MO
PostPosted: Mon Jan 30, 2006 10:06 am Reply with quote
The thing that confuses me here is that Otakon seems to be tackling the fanart issue on their own, as if somebody was bored and looking for something to "fix."

If, as Zac said earlier, Kouta Hirano's lawyer decided to go after Hellsing fanart, Otakon wouldn't have much of a choice. But:

RachelAnn at Otakon forum wrote:
The preliminary policy was announced for just this reason; to let the artists who frequent this board know what was coming, and give them an opportunity to respond. Because of the gray areas involved, it's always useful to have feedback from the community.

If this policy is a reaction to complaints from an artist or publisher, input from fans doesn't really matter. The law is the law, and the law says selling fanart is illegal.

So I'm wondering, why is Otakon even digging into this, and what could they possibly have to gain from it?
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ACDragonMaster



Joined: 23 Aug 2004
Posts: 405
PostPosted: Mon Jan 30, 2006 10:23 am Reply with quote
Wow, I think Mr. Horn really hit the nail on the head with his post, thank you very much for that well-wotded piece, and from someone working in the industry, no less.

And I must say that's generally true. Unlike things like bootlegs, fanart generally isn't something that's making a large profit off of something, and similarly it's not taking away sales. People who buy fanart usually buy it in addition to other merchandise, and fanart/doujinshi is often a great way of advertising as someone may pick something up by a favorite artist featuring a series they've never seen, and then be interested enough to check out the series.

Considering the timing of this post, too, more than half a year before the convention, there's certainly plenty of time to get things straightened out.


Jonathan Harmon wrote:
The issue of the attendance cap, on the other hand, is something that I do feel the need upon which to comment at some length. Our attendance cap was instituted in 2005 because the Baltimore Convention Center informed us that we had reached and even exceeded the fire code limits of the facility at several times during our 2004 event, even with a large concert held off-site at the 1st Mariner Arena during our peak hours on Saturday. We have managed to finesse some changes in our layouts and space usage patterns for 2006 and there should be some changes to the cap in the future, but the cold, hard reality of the situation is that we are in severe risk of having the Baltimore Fire Department shut down Otakon if we experience the over-crowding that was experienced at times during the 2004 event.

Moreover, Otakon's continually rising attendance from 2003 through 2005 had substantially out-stripped our ability to increase our staff rolls, and the planning staff determined in early 2005 that logistically our staff numbers could not support attendance much beyond our eventual cap of 22,000 members. Even if the Baltimore Convention Center and the Office of the Fire Marshall had not been so insistent about limiting attendance, a cap would likely have been deemed necessary on the grounds of quality of experience. We'd rather put on an enjoyable event for a slightly limited number of members that disappoint all by sacrificing quality in the name of unlimited access, because the drop in event quality and security was potentially monumental if attendance had significantly topped 22,000.


You know, for what it's worth, if I actually lived out on the east coast I would probably volunteer for staff. I've been to Otakon once before (in 2004, no less), and it's just a bit too large of a con, I think, for me to really enjoy just attending. ^_^;;

Though, I can completely understand the understaffing issue. The local anime con here in MN, its first year had over 1000 people show up, far more than any of the staff had expected. I'm still in awe at how well that year's staff managed to handle things. Though a lot of people may express an interest in staffing, it's often a very stressful and strenuous experience (though at the same time, potentially great fun and very rewarding), so keeping up sufficient staff numbers isn't easy...
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hikaru004



Joined: 15 Mar 2004
Posts: 2306
PostPosted: Mon Jan 30, 2006 10:53 am Reply with quote
ACDragonMaster wrote:


And I must say that's generally true. Unlike things like bootlegs, fanart generally isn't something that's making a large profit off of something, and similarly it's not taking away sales. People who buy fanart usually buy it in addition to other merchandise, and fanart/doujinshi is often a great way of advertising as someone may pick something up by a favorite artist featuring a series they've never seen, and then be interested enough to check out the series.



This sounds like a variation of the legitimacy of fansub arguement that I see so often here. Unfortunately, it really doesn't matter if the person makes $2 or $2 million dollars doing fanart/doujinshi. If the law states the activity is illegal, there should be no complaints otherwise and the activity should cease at public events. Just because an activity was tolerated in the past does not make it legal. It just means that said activity will eventually stop occuring if someone/some organization makes an issue of it.

Besides, if a person comes to the event with only so much money, spending it on fanart is taking away from a sale of an officially licensed product.


Insane E wrote:
Now I must ask, can you see any publisher taking Otakon to court over sales of fanart?


If something like that occured, it would prob end in an out of court settlement imo. But if that did occur, Otakon's reputation would be tarnished.


Last edited by hikaru004 on Mon Jan 30, 2006 11:10 am; edited 1 time in total
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prime_pm



Joined: 06 Feb 2004
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 30, 2006 10:55 am Reply with quote
This is all a weird area we're getting into. I, myself, support the freedom of fan arts as a hobby. But, at the same time, I have to remember how many of us are also Americans.

I'm going to take the time to speak of the webcomic artist for Stubble (it's been around for awhile).

Anyway, the artist, Josh, years ago had good friends who were part of a band (I stress the term were). One day, they asked Josh if he could draw a picture of the band for a flyer to their concerts. Being friends and an offer of good will, Josh agreed to draw a picture for them. A very nice drawing, if I may say so.

Awhile later, his friends come up again, this time asking if he could make a drawing for some T-shirts of the band they were going to sell.

Now Josh knew that if his friends were to sell shirts providing his artwork, it would only be fair that he would earn financial compensation for the shirt sales. He explains this to them, and this is their reaction:

His friends rip on Josh for being selfish and greedy, and in the end, they tell him they don't even want his stupid art anyway. But sure enough, their shirts come out, with the image that Josh drew for their flyers earlier. And since he had given them his approval before, and there was no way to prove that was his work, he was left out of commission.

Since then, he has continued to leave his signature on all of his art. Why is that? Because many times, people just seem to use other people's work for their own earnings without thinking of the consequences, and this is the best way to let people know that his is copyright.

I think that fan art should be allowed because it is a hobby. However, there are some who like to leave a, say, taint to this hobby by exploiting someone's work for financial benefit. I create fan videos, but I refuse to sell my work, because I know that the material provided was from the work of others (I do use them for my resumes, though, because I want to work in mass media).

Real fans do not need to sell the work of others, or drawn copies thereof, for money. They are fans because they respect the original author's work. But sometimes, there are lesser men that forget.
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