So, I'm kind-of on the Volunteers list for the
Organization of Transformative Works(OTW). I work with Accessibility, Design and Technology as a Member of the Watchers' Council, basically, this is just really a fancy title for a Quality Assurance Volunteer. Which means someone who looks at things and makes sure they work the way we intuitively think they will. (Though to be honest, life recently has gotten to be 'hell' in more ways than one, so I haven't really DONE much.)
I'm...torn about what OTW means to me. On the one hand, I DO see the legitimate need for Fandom to HAVE a speaking platform, freely representing itself. To own an archive, and to advocate the overlap of academia and fandom. And I will be joining the archive when it is finalized.
I agree that women should be involved in the making of the archive as well as men because we need more women in technology fields(I'm going into the technology field myself with the ultimate goal to be a sysadmin someday).
I agree that this could be a great start to getting fandom more mainstream and showing what fandom "really is".
HOWEVER, unlike most of the people I've seen represent on OTW, I'm against the idea that if an author expressly forbids fanworks(or shows an outright distaste for fanworks), that we are allowed to circumvent that wish(even if it's in-parody). I don't care if we have lawyers...I just don't think it's RIGHT to circumvent an original writer's wishes even if the fanworks we are writing are non-profits-- be they RP, fanfiction, fanvids or manips, though honestly it's kinda hard to see sometimes where an author stands--I've made mistakes myself a few times(Jasper Fforde and Marion Zimmer Bradley, mainly).
My opinion seems a bit...hypocritical doesn't it?
But, that's the way I stand with things like that. I don't think it's appropriate to take an authors wishes and step over them. I believe in doing things as you wanted to be treated. If you expressly forbid something, and I were to cross that line, you wouldn't be happy, would you? I know I wouldn't be happy if someone did it to me.