The rest of the thread is here.
tl;dr: Don’t monetize AO3, kids. You won’t like what happens next.
read this thread. this is by far the most concise explanation of a lot of different issues that i’ve seen in fandom spaces in a while. cosigning both the linked thread and the thread about aus/uk/can law that’s linked in-thread.
AHDHXHEBSG TWITTER WRITERS DID WHAT NOW???? AND PEOPLE PAID THEM????
If someone has never taken a class that includes copyright law, they may not know this stuff, so I don’t necessarily blame random people for not knowing what copyright is, but like… maybe just maybe it’s something that should be taught????
Just another reminder, because this always drives me crazy, but even if monetizing your fic was 100% unambiguously legal and protected, AO3 would still not let you do it because AO3 was founded and is supported by people like me who want a fandom community that is completely divested from making money off of fic.
Yes, this. Lots of fanworks on AO3 are unambiguously legal. Fics based on Shakespeare plays and fairy tales and Greek mythology and The Great Gatsby and your original character from your D&D game are not violations of copyright, because no copyright applies to those things.
AO3 still doesn’t let you monetize those things on the site, because we don’t want the site to be commercial! Because that’s not what it’s for!
It’s not there for you (generic you) to make money off the efforts of the people who build and maintain the site for free! We aren’t getting paid for the work we do to give you a nice site to use, just like you aren’t getting paid for the work you do to create whatever art you share there. Because fandom is supposed to be a community where we share with each other, and therefore we all benefit.
The deal is, we give you a free, stable, safe platform to host your works. In exchange, you get a site that isn’t covered in ads and tip jars and links to gofundme and “read the next chapter at my patreon”. You get one goddamn place on the internet that isn’t trying to make money off you. And we will defend that space and keep it non-commercial.
If you want to make money off your fics, you can instead post them somewhere like royal Road. “Oh, but Royal Road’s culture is so much more negative and stressful and lacks the supportive norms of AO3!” Yeah, because people are trying to make money there. Half the userbase is treating it as a storefront and hustling is the natural social consequence of that. AO3’s culture can only exist because it’s not commercial.
