Bootleg (term)
From Fan History Wiki
Bootleg is a term that means, in general, to make an illegal copy of something for sale (DVD, VHS tape, audio cassettes). For fanzines, it means to make an illegal copy of a fanzine.
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[edit] Historical Definitions
The historical definition of bootleg was to make an authorized copy of a product for sale. This has applied to audio cassettes, video cassettes, DVDs, and, during the high point of fanzine production, fanzines.
[edit] History
As time passed and fanzines became less expensive to produce due to advances in fanzine production technology, it became easier to photocopy an existing fanzine without permission of the original publisher and to sell that copy or copies on primary or secondary markets.
Initially, the fanzines most bootlegged were older fanzines (that had limited print runs due to production costs) or fanzines from overseas - the bootleggers would sell these fanzines in dealer's rooms at conventions without fear of being brought to task because the fanzine reading public (not always knowing that an item was an illegal copy) was eager to get their hands on the rare material and there was so much physical distance between the publisher and the convention that a publisher would rarely be present at an event when their bootlegged material was being sold.
As the number of fanzine readers increased, the number of fans who were presents at events at which bootlegged zines were sold also increased, to the point where original publishers were discovering bootlegged copies of their own zines being sold by other dealers at conventions they were attending.
Reproduction costs continued to drop and more reports of bootlegging appeared. At least one fanzine convention (I believe it was Revelcon) reported that people were purchasing zines from the original publisher in the dealer's room, going down the street to the local Kinkos copyshop and making copies, then returning with those copies and selling them for a price lower than the original publisher was charging.
The explosion of hot new fandoms on the scene, like Beauty and the Beast, further increased the reader demand and the bootleggers were quick to comply.
The primary motivation for bootlegging appeared to be profit - only the cost of photocopying was involved when someone purchased an original copy of a zine, then photocopied it and sold copies at a profit. There are some bootleggers who claimed that they were providing a service to fandom, bringing older, in-demand and out of print or overseas fanzines to a wide audience at an inexpensive cost. And there were some bootleggers who claimed that they were not doing anything legally wrong - since a fanzine is in a dubious position legally due to possible copyright infringement, the person who copied that fanzine could not be faulted because the original was a possible violation of law.
The gray legal nature of fanzines led to bootleggers escaping any legal ramifications for their acts - the last thing a fanzine publisher wanted was their work to be brought to the attention of the parent company that owned or protected the copyright, which would happen if a civil suit was brought in court. The names of suspected bootleggers were passed through fandom in panels at conventions, phone, mail, or publications in letterzines. Fanzine conventions kept note of any dealers who signed up for dealer space who were suspected of selling unauthorized zines. Conventions were known to include language in their by-laws or membership standards that anyone caught selling authorized fanzines would be asked to leave the convention without a refund and might have the unauthorized inventory or all of their inventory seized.
With the internet came a new type of bootlegging - people who would download material from the internet, format it, and sell it as a fanzine they had "edited", leaving the original author's name as a selling point but without the permission of the original author. Susan M. Garrett reports:
"When attending a convention in Hight Point, North Carolina to on my novel promotion tour 1997-1998, I saw a dealer had fanzines. As I approached the table, I heard the dealer discussing the sale of a fanzine called "Resurrection" from Forever Knight. Knowing that I had a story by that title in the Forever Knight fandom, I was just about to ask when the dealer told the prospective buyer that the story was by "Susan Garrett" and that she had edited the story and produced the fanzine. I was really quite stunned by this. I informed the dealer that I was Susan garret and that I had not given my permission for that story to be edited or sold by anyone - and told the customer they could download the story for free from the internet. As the dealer tried to justify her position, I noticed that on her table was a copy of a zine I had produced called Ticket to Read that had cover artwork by Ann Larimer - although it appeared to be on plain cover stock (the original had an offset cover on special paper). The dealer had taken one story from the zine (I do not know if it was her own) and repackaged that story for publication by itself, using the original zine cover without any authorization. Had I not been so stunned at the audacity of this - I had been on the convention guest list for month - I would have gone to the con committee and asked them to seize the material I could identify as not having been authorized by me. Instead, I politely asked the woman to remove the material from the dealer's table, which she did."
With the expansive growth of fan fiction on the internet, fan fiction has final overcome the main reason for producing a fanzine - getting fanworks into the hands of reader's for the cheapest price possible - which has also reduced the number of fanzines being produced, as well as the profit margin for bootleggers. The internet has provided a new venue for bootleggers, in Ebay auction and store sites, as well as other internet sale sites.
Fanzine agents - dealers who original zines or reproductions of zines with the authorization of the original publisher - have always come under scrutiny for selling unauthorized materials either under or over the table. Agents have also been accused upon occasion of "extending" the print run of an authorized fanzine without notifying the publisher by reproducing additional copies of the zine for sale and then pocketing the proceeds. Due to the fact that travel becomes more expensive - and more of a hardship as fanzine publishers age - authorized agents provide a service to fandom by keeping fanzines in print. It is the agents who participate in shady behavior and do not provide accurate accounting to the publishers for whom they agent that blacken the name of upstanding agents.
[edit] Effects on Fanzines
- A decrease in the number of new fanzines being produced and the number of publishers producing them. Fanzines were always costly to produce and distribute and the average publisher would be lucky to recoup half of the costs of fanzine production through sales of authorized materials. Bootleggers selling authorized copies meant that authorized copies - which may cost more - did not sell. A publisher who could recoup little of the cost of producing a fanzine would not be able to afford to produce new fanzines.
- A decrease in the artistic investment a publisher would make in a zine. If the publisher spent extra money for paper, special plates, color covers and a bootlegger was selling unauthorized copies that were black and white photocopies of an original, the publisher may be dissuaded from spending extra money for artistic enhancements for future fanzines.
- A decrease in quality control. Most publishers would spent inordinate hours doing layouts, proofing text, setting fonts, as well as expending extra money on color covers or offset interior pencil illustrations. How horrific is it when they develop a reputation of putting out a crap publication because there are versions of their works circulated that are cheaply photocopied with blotched, wrinkled, or missing pages, the pencil artwork looks like heavy charcoal lines or has disappeared, and the color cover is just a mass of photocopied shadows?
[edit] Combating Fanzine Bootlegging
The primary theory behind the effort to combat bootlegging has been that bootleggers are looking for a quick way to make a buck and so, in general, don't want to go out of their way to provide an identical copy. Many different efforts have been made by zine publishers over the years to combat bootlegging. These include:
- Identifying bootleggers - collecting specific information about fanzines that an individual has bootlegged and notifying con committees and other fans of the identify of the person and requesting that the offending material be confiscated by any authorities in charge of the event.
- Public outreach - asking fans not to purchase materials from known bootleggers and to request their fannish friends to follow that behavior.
- Production values - producing a fanzine with a specially printed cover, a color cover, foiling, or some other artistic process that makes it easy to identify an original fanzine from a bootleg.
- Identifiable marks - listing an actual text item in the zine that says "If there is not a red stamp on this page showing X, this is a bootleg copy of this zine. Please notify the editor at--" and then taking the time to rubber stamp that page of the zine with a certain identifiable stamp in a color that will not produce well on black and white Xerox.
The latter two methods have become less reliable, particularly color covers, as the technology used to reproduce color covers has become more widespread and cheaper while producing excellent results. Even bootleggers can now take the time to reproduce a color cover, knowing that a color cover often sells a fanzine in a dealer's room.
[edit] Examples
- The Fantastically, Fundamentally Functional Guide to Fanzines for Editors & Publishers, edited by Susan M. Garrett contains a section on bootlegging and inexpensive steps a zine publisher can take to make identification of copy easier.
[edit] External Links
[edit] See also
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