kagome26isawsome

@Deadman Channeling Mad Eye Moody’s rant about keeping constant vigilance, stay out of trouble! 

We don’t allow Patreon here, exactly because there’s no way for us to be sure that members are only receiving donations for original work.

It is a clear and distinct violation of copyright law for anyone to profit from copyrighted material without written permission from the copyright owner. So, a toy company can make a Harry Potter game, as long as they receive permission from JK Rowling, but if someone sells Harry Potter merchandise without having obtained that permission, the lawyers will swoop in, and generally the person violating copyright law gets to pay their lawyer and the copyright owner’s lawyer, substantial fines, and possibly could receive a jail sentence based on how much they earned.

The same thing applies to fan fiction. If someone sets up a Patreon on a fiction archive, and publishes both fan fiction and original work on the archive, there’s no way to tell what the patrons are donating for. The patrons might think they’re doing the author a huge favor by donating, so the author can work on that fan fiction they love so much, and if they mention in a review that they donated for that reason, well. I would not want to be in that author’s shoes when the copyright owner finds out.

@BronxWench “Money attracts lawyers” is my more succinct way of putting it.  If @Deadman wants to pay a copyright lawyer to sit in their conference room learning the finer points of copyright law to research a theoretical loophole … I’m guessing there’s better ways to spend time & money.

Me personally… I don’t seek money in my writing, so exploring into copyright & fair use is more of an academic brain teaser for me.  I do keep my fanfic and original pen-names distinct, so there’s less to muddy if I were to setup a Patreon for under my original writing pen-name.  BUT… I do have a good day job with vacation/insurance benefits so monetizing writing isn’t a necessity.