The Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) is a nonprofit, fan activist organization. Its mission is to serve fans by preserving and encouraging transformative fan activity, known as " fanwork", and by making fanwork widely accessible. OTW advocates for the transformative, legal, and legitimate nature of fan labor activities, including fan fiction, fan videos, fan art, anime music videos, podfic (audio recordings of fan fiction), and real person fiction. Its vision is to nurture fans and fan culture, and to protect fans' transformative work from legal snafus and commercial exploitation.

Services and platforms

The Organization for Transformative Works offers the following services and platforms to fans in a myriad of fandoms: *

Archive of Our Own Archive of Our Own (often shortened to AO3) is a nonprofit open source repository for fanfiction and other fanworks contributed by users. The site was created in 2008 by the Organization for Transformative Works and went into open beta in 2009. ...

(AO3): An open-source, non-commercial, non-profit, multi-fandom web archive built by fans for hosting fan fiction and for embedding other fanwork, including fan art, fan videos, and podfic. *

Fanlore Fanlore is a wiki created to preserve the history of transformative works, as well as that of fans, and fandoms, with a focus on people and their activities rather than on fandom canon. The beta version of Fanlore launched in September 2008, ...

: A

wiki A wiki ( ) is an online hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the pu ...

for fans from a wide range of communities whose published mission is to provide a platform "to record and share their histories, experiences and traditions" in fandom and fanwork history. * Open Doors: Preservation of fannish historical artifacts, such as

zines A zine ( ; short for ''magazine'' or ''fanzine'') is a small-circulation self-published work of original or appropriated texts and images, usually reproduced via a copy machine. Zines are the product of either a single person or of a very sma ...

and Geocities websites, as well as transferring fanfiction to

from other websites when they shut down. * '' Transformative Works and Cultures'': A

peer-reviewed Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work ( peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer revie ...

academic journal for scholarship on fanworks and practices * Legal advocacy to the fandom community, addressing the legal issues with fan fiction and other fan works, including defending fans'

fair use Fair use is a doctrine in United States law that permits limited use of copyrighted material without having to first acquire permission from the copyright holder. Fair use is one of the limitations to copyright intended to balance the intere ...

of copyrighted material. * ''Vidding'' (2008): a series of six short documentaries on vidding, in combination with participatory-culture academic Henry Jenkins and the New Media Literacies project at

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern t ...

. * Fanhackers: A directory of information and resources to help fans, academics, and activists, including good metadata (information, analysis, and discussion about data).

Legal activism

The OTW provides legal assistance to the fandom community, addressing the legal issues with fan fiction and other fan works. Rebecca Tushnet, a noted legal scholar on fanfiction and

in copyright and trademark law, works with the OTW's legal project. In 2008, the OTW (in coordination with the

Electronic Frontier Foundation The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. The foundation was formed on 10 July 1990 by John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow and Mitch Kapor to promote Internet ...

) successfully submitted requests to the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The librar ...

for further exceptions to the

Digital Millennium Copyright Act The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a 1998 United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or ...

to allow the fair use of video clips for certain noncommercial uses such as video remixes, commentary, and education, as well as to protect technology used for such purposes. The exceptions were also successfully renewed in 2012 and expanded in 2015. The OTW, the

, and New Media Rights submitted a new petition for exemptions in 2018. The OTW has also submitted several ''amicus'' briefs to the courts in several cases involving intellectual property law: * In ''Fox vs. Dish'', the OTW (in coalition with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Knowledge) submitted an ''amicus'' brief which argued in defense of digital recording methods used by

Dish Network DISH Network Corporation (DISH, an acronym for DIgital Sky Highway) is an American television provider and the owner of the direct-broadcast satellite provider Dish, commonly known as Dish Network, and the over-the-top IPTV service, Sling TV ...

, claiming that "The popular fanwork genre of noncommercial videos ('vids') uses clips from television shows or film, reworking them in a way that comments on or critiques the original. The Copyright Office has held that substantial numbers of vids constitute fair uses. But the creation of fan vids requires intermediate digital copying and processing in order to produce the transformative final product. OTW thus believes that intermediate copying performed to facilitate fair use constitutes fair use." * In the case of ''Ryan Hart vs. Electronic Arts'', the OTW (in combination with the Digital Media Law Project and the

International Documentary Association International Documentary Association (IDA), founded in 1982, is a non-profit 501(c)(3) that promotes nonfiction filmmakers, and is dedicated to increasing public awareness for the documentary genre. Their major program areas are: Advocacy, Filmm ...

) submitted a brief arguing that

Electronic Arts Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) is an American video game company headquartered in Redwood City, California. Founded in May 1982 by Apple employee Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer game industry and promoted th ...

's use of factual information (such as the height, weight, and jersey number of football players) in creative works (in this case, video games) is protected by the First Amendment.

Fandom archival projects

The OTW has also instituted several projects for preserving fan history and culture. One such project was the creation of Fanlore, a

for preserving fandom history. The Fanlore wiki was first revealed in beta in 2008, with a full release in December 2010. In June 2018, there were approximately 45,000 articles and 800,000 edits to the wiki, and it passed a million edits in January 2021. The OTW also has several "Open Doors" projects dedicated to the preservation of fannish historical artifacts. These projects include The Fan Culture Preservation Project, a joint venture between the OTW and the Special Collections department at the

University of Iowa The University of Iowa (UI, U of I, UIowa, or simply Iowa) is a public research university in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. Founded in 1847, it is the oldest and largest university in the state. The University of Iowa is organized into 12 coll ...

to archive and preserve fanzines and other non-digital forms of fan culture, and The GeoCities Rescue Project, which attempted to preserve content originally hosted on Yahoo's GeoCities by transferring that content to new locations on the Archive of Our Own or within the Fanlore wiki. Other miscellaneous artifacts and collections are stored on the OTW's main servers in th
Special Collections
gallery.

Archive of Our Own

Created by the OTW, the Archive of Our Own (often shortened to AO3) is an open-source, non-commercial, non-profit archive for fan fiction and other transformative fanwork. The Archive is built and run entirely by volunteers, many without previous coding experience. The Archive was publicly launched into open beta on 14 November 2009, and has been growing steadily since. ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, t ...

'' magazine included Archive of Our Own on its list of "50 Best Websites 2013". ''Time'' said that AO3 "serves all fandoms equally, from The A-Team to

Zachary Quinto Zachary John Quinto (; born June 2, 1977) is an American actor and film producer. He is known for his roles as Sylar, the primary antagonist from the science fiction drama series '' Heroes'' (2006–2010); Spock in the film ''Star Trek'' (2009) ...

and beyond", and also called it "the most carefully curated, sanely organized, easily browsable and searchable nonprofit collection of fan fiction on the Web...". Fans post, tag and categorize their own works on AO3. Volunteer "tag wranglers" link similar tags so readers can search for works in the categories and types they want. The tagging system allows easy compilation of statistics (stats). Fan fiction ranges in length, from fewer than one thousand words ( flash fiction, or one-hundred-word drabbles) to novel-length works of hundreds of thousands of words. According to an article on fandom statistics published on ''

The Daily Dot ''The Daily Dot'' is a digital media company covering the culture of the Internet and the World Wide Web. Founded by Nicholas White in 2011, ''The Daily Dot'' is headquartered in Austin, Texas. The site, conceived as the Internet's "hometow ...

'' newspaper in 2013, AO3 hosts more very short works than long ones, but readers prefer the longer works. The average very short story received fewer than 150 hits, while novel-length works are more likely to receive around 1,500 hits. A writer who posts a story on AO3 can record its word count on the story's header, along with other information such as the story's fandom, ships, and other tropes. Some fan works are 'crossovers' that draw on two or more universes or characters. Writers can also note if their story is finished or a work in progress (WIP). As of 2018, the archive hosts more than 4.2 million works in more than 30,000 fandoms. Destination Toast, fan and statistician, compiles and analyzes fandom statistics, especially stats from Archive of Our Own, which she says is "the most easily searchable archive I know of." In January 2016, she poste
"2015: A (Statistical) Year in Fandom."
It includes statistics from two other large fan fiction archives, FanFiction.Net (FFN) and Wattpad as well as the popular microblog platform

Tumblr Tumblr (stylized as tumblr; pronounced "tumbler") is an American microblogging and social networking website founded by David Karp in 2007 and currently owned by Automattic. The service allows users to post multimedia and other content to a ...

. The post shows that the most active fandoms on AO3 in 2015 were (largest first) ''

Supernatural Supernatural refers to phenomena or entities that are beyond the laws of nature. The term is derived from Medieval Latin , from Latin (above, beyond, or outside of) + (nature) Though the corollary term "nature", has had multiple meanings si ...

'', '' Dragon Age'', ''

Harry Potter ''Harry Potter'' is a series of seven fantasy novels written by British author J. K. Rowling. The novels chronicle the lives of a young wizard, Harry Potter, and his friends Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley, all of whom are students a ...

'', ''The Avengers'', '' Teen Wolf'', and '' Sherlock''. Other media sources include movies, television shows, and books including ''

The Lord of the Rings ''The Lord of the Rings'' is an Epic (genre), epic high-fantasy novel by English author and scholar J. R. R. Tolkien. Set in Middle-earth, intended to be Earth at some time in the distant past, the story began as a sequel to Tolkien's 1937 c ...

'', '' Doctor Who,'' and ''

The Hunger Games ''The Hunger Games'' is a series of young adult dystopian novels written by American author Suzanne Collins. The first three novels are part of a trilogy following teenage protagonist Katniss Everdeen, and the fourth book is a prequel se ...

''.

Services and platforms

Legal activism

Fandom archival projects

Archive of Our Own

References

External links