it's my understanding that if the person doing the creation isn't profiting from it, copyright issues are less likely to come into play

There's no law directly on point yet. So no court has yet said whether or not who gets the money matters.

I suspect that if someone who is not the copyright holder is getting money? The courts would care. Regardless of the relationship between the creator of the derivative work and the recipient of the cash.

Which, I expect, is what your IP friend will say. I need to see if Rivka has thoughts on this...

Just to refresh my memory -- VividCon! As in, who's going, again?

I mean, I don't need to start figuring out exactly how much food, booze, comics, and vids to pack in my car right now, but...

Just to refresh my memory -- VividCon! As in, who's going, again?

*raises hand*

Crap. I really need to get on making reservations if I want to use my frequent flier miles, don't I?

I'm kind of thinking of going

I was going to but now I don't think I could get the money together so I backed out. Although Margie indicated that if I could get the money together I'd still have a place.

Which, I expect, is what your IP friend will say.

Nope. She demurred from making any larger judgment, but when other people compared it to a standard political fundraiser, where people are given food or performances or whatever as a thanks for their contribution, she didn't object, either.

In a standard political fundraiser people have the right to own, manipulate, and transfer ownership of the stuff they are giving away.

There's no transfer of ownership of the fic, though. It's being posted.

I don't think that's a direct analogy, though (if I understand the issues correctly). If a political fundraiser gave away copies someone had burned of Britney's new album, it'd still be a violation of copyright. No one's claiming they own it, but you're still not allowed to do it.

I do think fic is more of a gray area, as it always is, and everyone's got their own particular moral line. Personally, I'm not stressed about it, but then again, I'm not participating. Nor am I a lawyer, so what do I know?

(I'm reminded of a conversation I saw on a Nikita board, where the person who was selling burned CDs of series composer Sean Callery's original music claimed that it couldn't possibly be illegal, because otherwise why would CD burners exist?)

That's not a good analogy, though, because in that case you're creating direct duplicates of copyrighted material, and giving it to people for their individual use. Neither of those apply here, at least to the fic.