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I have become aware that not all of my followers understand why AO3 doesn’t allow you to share your ko-fi or patreon or ask for money on the archive.
This is actually something that’s really important to know, so I’m sharing this reply to a question about the topic as it’s own separate post.
it’s actually extremely important that AO3 creators not attempt to monentize their work, specifically because of the capitalist hellhole we all live in.
Fanfiction is allowed legally to exist by the grace of “fair use” laws. This is what protects fanfiction authors from being sued or issued cease and desist orders by the holders of the copyrighted works that they’re creating derivative fiction of.
The Organization for Transformative Works which maintains AO3 works to legally protect fanfiction authors from malicious and angry copyright holders who want to destroy fanfiction.
The only way that they can do this within the framework of US law under which they operate, is to maintain fair use.
And fair use of transformative works is only able to be upheld in terms of fanfiction if the creators are deriving no monetary or material benefit from creating it.
Once you start asking for money for fanfiction you unfortunately make that fanfiction illegal under copyright law.
If AO3 does not make a good faith effort to prevent people from earning money for their fanfiction on the site, It puts the whole archive at risk legally.
And in case you find this unfair: yeah it is. US Copyright law is stupidly unfair and maintains Fair Use almost entirely by insisting Fair Use means “not profiting from this.” It’s literally why AO3 is run by OTW, a Non-Profit Organization.
This conversation frequently devolves into whataboutism about how fan art can get away with commissions and I’m here to tell you YES. IT CAN. Fan art commissions have a lot of grey area in ESTABLISHED LEGAL PRECEDENT that fanfiction absolutely does not benefit from. Fan art gets treated differently because it’s already been tested in court and found it’s wiggle room. Fanfiction has not.
No one has to like it, but this is the reality of US-based copyright law we currently live under. And we’ll be lucky if fan art, cosplay, and other fannish expressions don’t lose what wiggle room they already have.
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