Life Without FanLib

I fully plan on this post being woefully unpopular here, but I stand by it. So, here goes:

The business world can be a dastardly place, indeed, especially when it comes to corporations who have made billions and want to make more billions.

The RIAA connection is FanLib is questionable at best, shady at worst.

But if you guys think that are going to find evility™ in their TOS, you're fooling yourselves.

If you think you hadn't already agreed to similar terms with Livejournal, ff.net, or any of the other countless major journal/fanfic archives, then you're sadly mistaken.

The TOS is designed solely to protect the business. Period. LJ's is no different.

( Let's look at LJ's TOS )


Myspace has it.
Facebook has it.
Google has it. <-- hell, how many @gmail.com do I see from LJ users?? Tonnes. AND THEY ARCHIVE EMAILS!!!!!

Everything, you send, receive, save is on a server. And, guess what, you've agreed to it by agreeing to their TOS, which has everything FanLib's has plus a couple extra things specific to their business needs. Now, so far Google has been pretty 'fuck you' to FBI and CIA when it comes to handing over records. That's a fact that has helped public opinion, but don't think in a way that, should their policy change, you'll be able to sue or protected from it or whatever... you won't be.

Now, that's not to say not to keep looking...

But, if you think that FanLib with its 'intellectual might' would put something blatantly in print that proves that they are evil Evil EVIL, you'll be looking for a long time. TOSs are about as neutral as possible they are designed to be, they NEED to be.

( I do, however, think something much deeper than they are letting on is happening. So, here's my paranoia, coupled with parallelisms drawn from the music industry over the past 60+ years )

The best thing to do is to pay attention to any proposed changes of law, Congress, blogs dealing with the FanLib subject, and especially anything that has to do with someone challenging them to an interview (and their acceptance). Our time and energy shouldn't be wasted picking apart their TOS, especially when we freely use a service with a much similar one.


ADDENDUM-1: synecdochic does a wonderful analysis of LJ's ToS and FanLib's. The post can be found here. And I -- as well as others -- thank her (?) for the time taken to do this. However, one of the main issues that synecdochic has is the clause in FanLib's 'indemnity'.

You agree to defend, indemnify and hold harmless FanLib,

Basically, via 'defend', the clause allows FanLib to pass on any court case/fees to you, the author. When it was brought up that LJ could do similar by suing authors for 'breach of contract', synecdochic points out that they wouldn't because of the CDA, DMCA, and the 'safe harbour'. S/he then goes on to say:

(I know how LJ enforces things. I don't know how FanLib plans to.)

Which is well and good to know, but the fact that s/he had to pull information and add 2 and 2 from other sources other than the ToS merely proves my point: that you cannot determine intentions or 'evility' of a company by their ToS. You simply cannot. S/he's even had to pull information from outside the ToS to illustrate why s/he knows that LJ would never sue someone. But someone reading their ToS would not know this unless they were versed in the DMCA and what safe harbor means and she admits that she's worked 5 years in the industry. 98% have not.

The other issue that she had was with the difference between LJ's 'asking you to edit material' or FanLib having the right to 'remove your material without warning'.

Again, this is a cosmetic difference, and should definitely be a determining factor in whether or not you chose to host your fic there. But, it's not proof of shade, people. It's just how they'll handle fics that start to cause them problems. Apparently, there was a similar hooplah over ff.net when people found their fics suddenly gone... But again, this isn't unique. Myspace has this. We agree to this all the time. I count count how many times I logged on to Myspace to find a picture in my profile removed. Of course, they sent me an email saying why, which was nice of them, but they let it be known that they didn't have to even do that.

The reason why I make this addendum is because even now, people are pointing to her post as proof of Evility. They're practically saying "See? FanLib's ToS isn't the same as LJ's! EVIL!!!!" And, of course, that's a fallacy. LJ's ToS is different because: a) they're a different service and have different needs and b) they have other protections afforded to them from other documentations that are not provided by their ToS or even really mentioned. Regardless, their ToS acts like everyone else's ToS - THEIR PROTECTION. Not yours.

The ToS proves only that FanLib isn't the best place to host your fics and you shouldn't sign up for it. It proves nothing else. No evil plot, no dastardly deeds (tho' I do think there's something shady going on in the Publishing/screenplay/scriptwriting world... but it's not because of any I see in FanLib's ToS)

The point of this post wasn't to go tit-for-tat on LJs ToS versus FanLib's ToS. It was to prove that their ToS is pretty standard (it is) and nothing too unusual (it isn't).

That isn't to say I like 'em. I don't. Even if they were angels, there were no ulterior motives, and they didn't have the former president of RIAA as one of their top dogs, I would still prefer to host my fic here on LJ and other standard places where they're already at rather than host it at FanLib.

If this post has done anything, I hope it's gotten you to at least realise that you need to READ -- REALLY READ -- the ToS for everything: free webservice, Myspaces, Bulletin Boards, etc. Because that tells you where your protections END. [end addendum]