‘Celebrating the story the way it is’: cultural studies, corporate media and the contested utility of fandom

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Simone Murray is an Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of English, Media Studies & Art History at the University of Queensland. Her current research examines the multi‐purposing of digital media content across platforms, and the implications of this practice for content owners, producers, consumers and policy makers. She is also author of the first book‐length analysis of gender politics and book publishing, Mixed Media: Feminist Presses and Publishing Politics (published by Pluto Press, UK, February 2004). Correspondence to: [email protected]

Time Warner officially became AOL‐Time Warner in the wake of its January 2000 merger with Internet service provider America Online. In September 2003, the stock‐market tech‐wreck having greatly devalued the AOL brand, the conglomerate announced it was reverting to the name Time Warner (‘Directors’, 2003, p. 52). For clarity, the article refers to the conglomerate throughout as ‘Time Warner’ (TW), reserving ‘AOL’ specifically to refer to the group's Internet division.

See www.ain 't‐it‐cool‐news.com/lordoftherings.html.

Knowles' scathing verdict on John McTiernan's remake of Rollerball (2002), dubbing it ‘a complete embarrassment’, is credited with initiating a slew of negative reviews (Purcell, 2003, p. 8; ‘Hollywood Inc.’, 2003).

Copyright Term Extension Act 1998 (US)—known colloquially as the Sonny Bono Act—part of the raft of legislation comprising the Digital Millennium Copyright Act 1998 (US).

Published in the United States by Scholastic as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in 1998. The respective UK and US releases of the first film in the series in November 2001 followed the same naming convention.

See http://www.PotterWar.org.uk and http://www.dprophet.com/dada

The transatlantic protest campaign's manifesto is found at: http://www.dprophet.com/dada/manifesto.html. Quotations are taken from the posted text.

The official Harry Potter film Website is found at: http://harrypotter.warnerbros.com

A statement posted on the PotterWar.org.uk Website declared that TW had engaged in a ‘PR disaster’, and that the campaign had been a success, except for the case of Scott Allision, a 28‐year‐old UK citizen, who had been forced to transfer his domain name to Warner Bros.

The official Lord of the Rings film Website is: www.lordoftherings.net. The .net URL suffix, rather than the more common film Website suffix .com, is in keeping with New Line's careful positing of fans as community rather than as consumerbase.

The charter membership fan listings are found at the end of disc 2 of the four‐disc The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring DVD set released in November 2002.

Online fan fiction, itself inhabiting an IP grey area, is frequently marked © by authors, while LOTR fansites deriving much of their content from New Line drip‐feeds have registered their URL names as trademarks, for example Ringbearer.org^®. Exemplifying the legally ambiguous borderlands which fansites occupy is the disclaimer for TheOneRing.net^®:

This site is maintained and updated by fans of The Lord of the Rings, and is in no way affiliated with Tolkien Enterprises or the Tolkien Estate. We in no way claim the artwork displayed to be our own. Copyrights and trademarks for the books, films, articles, and other promotional materials are held by their respective owners and their use is allowed under the fair use clause of the Copyright Law. Design and original photography however are copyright © 1999–2003 TheOneRing®.net. TheOneRing® is a registered service mark with exclusive right to grant use assigned to The One Ring, Inc.

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Simone Murray

Simone Murray is an Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of English, Media Studies & Art History at the University of Queensland. Her current research examines the multi‐purposing of digital media content across platforms, and the implications of this practice for content owners, producers, consumers and policy makers. She is also author of the first book‐length analysis of gender politics and book publishing, Mixed Media: Feminist Presses and Publishing Politics (published by Pluto Press, UK, February 2004). Correspondence to: [email protected]