soloset said:
ETA: Assuming it is illegal fanfiction, the sheer chutzpah of this site is amazing, by the way. I can't imagine putting that much work into something I could never really call my own. And it's unfortunate in our country that inventiveness and determination displayed here probably won't be rewarded because of copyright laws.
We have both fan shows and original shows, and we are being rewarded heartily though not in the ways you were probably thinking of.
We have a large and growing fanbase. People grab anywhere from 1000-2000 mp3s from our site
every day. They're incredibly loyal and devoted. And building a huge audience via fan shows is a great way to then expose them to your original work.
If we took our first original show and just started parading it around, few (if any) would want to listen to it, let alone join us to help create them.
But Superman fans will listen to a Superman show. Same with Batman. Star Trek. Indiana Jones. They can experience the quality and professionalism we strive for in all areas and know we produce quality entertainment.
And then you have a huge, built-in audience who suddenly wants to check out your original shows about characters they've never heard of before. And they also want to join and audition for roles, direct shows... we have over 250 members now. When we first started the entire group was me and about 11 close friends I roped into helping me. Without fan shows to help it grow, we never could have even attempted original shows.
It's really a very effective model.
Paramount used to go after and shut down ANY fan sites they could find back in the mid '90s, but it got them a ton of bad press and with the questionable success of Voyager and Enterprise, I think they've come to realize that fan productions are the ONLY think keeping Trek alive at this point, until they can get back to delivering quality Trek on their own.
Marvel is litigation-happy, but we don't use any Marvel properties. DC has to be well aware of our shows, because we're partnered with SupermanHomepage.com for our Superman show (the longest running one we have - two years now!) and DC staff, writers, etc. use that site all the time for research, to gauge fan reactions and opinions, etc. So they know we exist and haven't done a thing, probably because we're not making a dime off of it and they know it only increases interest in their own properties.