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11 months agoFanfics are 100% copyright infringement, there’s no fair use/dealings defence of them. There’s just little point for corporations to go out and enforce their copyright, fanfic authors likely don’t have much money and it’d be a PR nightmare. Obviously this equation changes when people start to profit of fan work, it’s why AO3 doesn’t allow direct links to donation pages.
It would be weird if the OTW just outright stated that fanfiction was copyright infringement, starting off from the position of “yeah, it breaks the law” would be a bad form of advocatory. The case they link on that FAQ is about a parody of (at the time) 20 year old song, which is materially very different from how fanfiction works. I do think if it ever did go to court that a non-commercial exception would likely be carved out, but as it currently stands I don’t think there’s any precedent in either my own country or America that can be used to argue that fanfiction meets the criteria for fair use/dealings. Then again, I’m not a lawyer so my opinion probably isn’t worth much.
(sidenote: it’s mad that American copyright law doesn’t have an explicit exception for parody)