Semiotic democracy is a phrase first coined by John Fiske, a media studies

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professor ...

, in his seminal media studies book ''Television Culture'' (1987).John Fiske, ''Television Culture'' (Routledge, 1987). Fiske defined the term as the "delegation of the production of meanings and pleasures to elevision'sviewers." Fiske discussed how rather than being passive couch potatoes that absorbed information in an unmediated way, viewers actually gave their own meanings to the shows they watched that often differed substantially from the meaning intended by the show's producer. Subsequently, this term was appropriated by the technical and legal community in the context of any re-working of

cultural imagery The imaginary (or social imaginary) is the set of values, institutions, laws, and symbols through which people imagine their social whole. It is common to the members of a particular social group and the corresponding society. The concept of the ...

by someone who is not the original author. Examples include fan fiction and

slash fiction Slash fiction (also known as "m/m slash") is a genre of fan fiction that focuses on romantic or sexual relationships between fictional characters of the same sex.Bacon-Smith, Camille. "Spock Among the Women." New York Times Sunday Book Review, ...

. Legal scholars are concerned that just as technology eases the process of cheaply making and distributing derivative works imbued with new cultural meanings available to wide public,

copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, education ...

and right-to-publicity law is clamping down on and limiting these works, thus reducing their promulgation, and limiting semiotic democracy. Prof. Terry Fisher of

Harvard Law School Harvard Law School (Harvard Law or HLS) is the law school of Harvard University, a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest continuously operating law school in the United States. Each class ...

has written about semiotic democracy in the context of the crisis facing the entertainment industry and in terms of the ability of people to use the Internet in creative new ways.William W Fisher, ''Promises to Keep: Technology, Law and the Future of Entertainment'' (Stanford University Press, 2004).

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