For someone who claims to be a fandom elder, you seem to be really, really poorly informed on a) what a nonprofit is, b) how AO3 functions, c) the legal status of fanfiction, and d) the history of fanfiction platforms.
The OTW (which is the group that runs AO3) is legally registered as a 501©3 nonprofit corporation. That means there are very strict legal requirements as to how they can use their money. When we say they are not profiting, that means that when they have extra money, it goes right back into their operations. In a for-profit corporation, when there is extra money, it is distributed among stockholders. That’s why people buy stock, and that’s why corporations put profits above everything else.
This would be like if OTW took whatever extra they had and gave it to their board members. They can’t do that, and they don’t do that. The board members who run it are entirely volunteers.
Now, nonprofits obviously can hire people and pay them for their work. CEOs of nonprofits can make hundreds of thousands of dollars, and sometimes nonprofits get bad publicity for that. If it’s too extreme, they can get their nonprofit status taken away.
The OTW occasionally has to pay a few contractors for things - if you look at their financial docs, which are easily accessible on the site, you’ll see that that only amounts to like $20K a year or something. That’s probably to hire someone with some specialty to fix a thing here or there, that kind of thing. I think last year they might have hired someone temporarily to help with some of the search overhauls? (Not sure, 2017 financials aren’t up yet)
They don’t have one single paid staff member. None. No, they don’t pay the writers, but they don’t pay the programmers, the lawyers, the tag wranglers, the people doing PR, the people handling the god damn money. None of those people personally sees a penny of what you donate.
So not only does nobody profit in that the extra money isn’t just distributed among stockholders or whoever, nobody involved in OTW/AO3 profits directly from their involvement.
That covers a and b. Now, for c and d…
I don’t believe for one second that you don’t know that the legality of fanfiction hinges on not making a profit from it. Elsewhere in replies, you point out places like RedBubble where people sell fanart - do you sell on RB? Because I do, and it is honestly a total crapshoot whether your designs get to stay up or not. If someone involved with a media property stumbles upon it and reports it, RB takes it down immediately, no questions asked.
Now, when a design based on Hamilton lyrics or something gets taken down, I get it. I know I’m rolling the dice when I post that.
But I had a design that said “Emotionally compromised by fictional characters” - no characters were mentioned in the design at all, it was just that text with a few flourishes around it. It got taken down because I tagged it Harry Potter (and some other fandoms). It was not violating any copyright at all, but RB took it down without question when Warner Brothers asked them to, because it was tagged Harry Potter. I could’ve just removed the tag!!
Is that how you want AO3 to function? Because if writers were getting paid, that’s exactly how they would have to function legally. As soon as a copyright holder complains, they’d take your fic down. YouTube has had all kinds of problems with this, because some studios get slap-happy with the DMCA claims on things that should be fair use, like commentary, and YT tends to take videos down and ask questions later.
The OTW, in addition to running AO3, also fights for the legal rights of fan creators, btw. For example, when the DMCA was passed, it basically made it illegal to rip your own DVDs and blu-rays. There go fanvids! The OTW was part of the legal team that got that exemption passed.
So if you want to know how writers benefit from AO3/OTW, they’re actively fighting for your right to write and post fanfiction at all. Thank them for that.
And as for being able to just go off to other platforms… Okay, so do that. Go. Is ff.net going to give you a cut of their profits? They make a profit-profit, btw. They are a for-profit company who makes actual money off of ads, and they do not give a penny of that back to writers. The people who run it keep it for themselves. They certainly don’t put it into improving their site, let alone fighting for the legal rights of their writers. Hell, they happily ban fanfiction based on any creator who complains about it!
Historically, every for-profit host of fan content has bowed to advertisers and/or dmca-happy content creators to one extent or another. AO3 is the only one that was created expressly for the purpose of protecting fanfiction and the rights of fic writers. You’re welcome to go back to those other platforms, but they won’t pay you and you better hope nobody complains about your fic.
If you can get people to pay you for your fic via Patreon or kofi whatever, more power to you. I support that. You won’t have a legal leg to stand on if the creators find you and shut you down, much like on RedBubble, but you can probably fly under the radar well enough.
But don’t ask a nonprofit organization to put its entire existence at risk just so you can make a couple dollars off your fic.
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