The BBC should be championing fan art, not threatening it

Anyone who publishes anything online lives under the ever-looming Sword of Damocles that is copyright.

For us here at the Newplex, historically this has meant making triply sure that any images we use in support of our articles fall within the vague purview of ‘Fair Use’. There’s a bunch of questions we can answer to assure ourselves; does the image provide context for our original piece? Does using the image prevent the rightful owner fully capitalising on their work? Is the work transformative?

But ultimately, as fans of H3H3 will recall, Fair Use is a defence – not a firewall, and trying to exercise that defence could leave you in financial ruin.

In recent months though, the Newplex has pivoted away from media criticism and commentary on the website (not to do with the above, just got bored of it lol) and has become far more interested in A) original content like our podcasts and comics and B) fan works.

We have a couple of fun things brewing over here at the Newplex, but on the immediate horizon are a couple of stories written by myself and Charles for Billy’s Doctor Who: Fast Returns project. We’re still in early days of production, but we’ve all already put a lot of work into these scripts and are so excited to share them with other fans.

You can imagine the collective unease, then, when a representative of BBC Studios began making their presence known before a single audio had even been uploaded. The targeted nature of the communication has raised a lot of eyebrows from Who fans, many of whom (including myself) are wondering first where it leaves our projects, and second what on earth Studios are playing at.

If you listened to episode 74 of The Newplex Podcast (don’t worry, I know you did x), Billy told us how cordial BBC’s reps had been with him in the run up to his Dark Dimension series. To be fair, even now, they do still get credit for writing individual emails as opposed to sending aggressive legal boilerplate.

But why were these projects targeted in the first place? My theory is that they were presented too professionally, which made someone pretend to worry that they could be mistaken for canon Who (which exists lol).

Not that it really matters. It could just be they already had his email in Outlook and it’s so much easier to tab-complete a name than type in a new one (do I put a semicolon after the name? Will Outlook do it for me? How do you work?!).

The point is, if fan content is getting a little too good to be comfortably distinguished from the real thing, then – for one, you should probably ask yourself some searching questions about how a kid with an iPhone is being competitive with you – and (more importantly) understand that this trend isn’t going away.

With the increasing availability of professional-grade production equipment at home and the presence of vibrant fan communities, high-quality fan content is here to stay.

Instead of being defensive however, this should excite the BBC tremendously.

Take a look at Marvel or Star Wars – two Disney brands which have more fan content than anyone should ever admit to have consumed all of (ahem). This stuff is on Twitter, YouTube, blogs, the side of buildings – all without issue (mostly). And this is Disney we’re talking about here. Disney. Mr. Break-Your-Kneecaps-For-Looking-At-Me-Funny Disney.

Marvel have even engaged directly with prolific fan artists like Boss Logic to create work for their Disney+ shows.

No one is arguing that the BBC shouldn’t generate income from Doctor Who. They already license off the brand to third parties for a variety of products. Big Finish have their audios, Character Options have their action figures, Lootcrate have their Sonic Sporks (for reasons) – and this revenue, in theory, helps keeps the lights on at Cardiff Bay and across other BBC productions.

But there are ways to protect their interests while still maintaining and encouraging a flourishing fan art scene. Indeed, as a public broadcaster, they are uniquely placed to do this. The BBC exists for very different reasons than Disney, and supporting the creativity of the public it serves should be part of its core values.

These are, after all, the people that will take over the IPs in an official capacity some day in the future.

I won’t pretend to have the perfect solution. I’ve been kicking around an idea for an ‘Open BBC License’ type thing in which fans can get permission for projects on ‘approve-as-default’ basis for very little or no money, which would also let the Beeb bind fan works to certain terms and conditions. I typed out one paragraph and then realised you’d all hate that so dropped it, but you get the general idea.

Fan generated content is the single most powerful marketing tool a brand can have and is a testament to the creativity it inspires. Netflix would kill for the level of fan engagement on their own IPs that the BBC gets on Doctor Who alone. Let’s not squander it.