OTW Fannews: Fan activism

• Indiewire hosted a post about a petition to the MTV Awards. The "Heroes" category overlooked an obvious candidate. "[I]t's still noteworthy that among MTV's 16 categories, the only other group without any female nominees is Best Male Performance. Katniss' exclusion, then, doesn't make sense from either a commercial point of view -- The Hunger Games was the highest-grossing film of 2013 -- or from a J. Law one, since the Oscar winner is nominated in four other categories...The character of Katniss is enough of a cultural touchstone that she appeared in one of the 'Heroes' montages at this year's Oscars, so MTV definitely done goofed."
• A planned webseries on artists' rights seeks to educate viewers about copyright, the internet and creativity. "CopyMe is "an infographic-style animated webseries that deals with our modern attitude to copying. It assembles the most relevant information and makes it accessible to everyone" so that it "will appeal both to copyright literates, as well as to those with no previous knowledge on these topics. Our biggest goal is to raise awareness and highlight our concerns regarding the copyright realities of today."
• A Wall Street Journal article about L.J. Smith quoted current and former OTW staffers, Heidi Tandy and Francesca Coppa. "'It feels like a land grab,' said Francesca Coppa...'Big companies are trying to insert themselves explicitly to get people who don't know any better to sign away rights to things that might be profitable.'" Indeed, the article notes that "Ms. Smith says that when she began publishing her Vampire Diaries fan fiction on Amazon this past January, she wasn't aware that she was giving up the copyright to those stories, too. Nor did she realize she'd be giving Alloy a cut of earnings from the new stories."
• One of our favorite pieces of activism this week is a little biased. White Collar Vids created a vidlet for the OTW's October membership drive in 2012 -- take a look!

What examples of fan activism have you seen? Write about them on Fanlore! Contributions are welcome from all fans.

We want your suggestions! If you know of an essay, video, article, podcast, or link you think we should know about, comment on the most recent OTW Fannews post. Links are welcome in all languages! Submitting a link doesn't guarantee that it will be included in a Fannews post, and inclusion of a link doesn't mean that it is endorsed by the OTW.