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Originally Posted by Worldwalker
Actually, as I understand it (and I could be wrong here), the court refused to issue an injunction, ruling that there was insufficient grounds to block the publication of The Wind Done Gone before it was actually sold.
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Yes. The court refuse to support the injunction, because it didn't consider it likely that infringement could be proven. Which is not quite the same as an actual ruling of "this is not infringing."
My point is that it's not "definitely illegal;" there aren't any solid legal rulings to point at to prove that fanfic violates copyright instead of falling within fair use provisions.
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OTW might defend a case involving "real" fanfic (slash written by women) but if that does anything, it makes it more likely the rights owners will file against men, or against het or gen writers, instead.
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OTW is not a women-writing-slash support organization. I'm pretty sure the OTW would be happy to support any fanfic author in any case of canon creators filing suit against fanfic. I know that their stance is that fanfic is generally a transformative, not derivative, use of the original. (That can't be absolute; one could argue that taking an original book and replacing all the character names with the fanficcer's friends' names is "fanfic," which would not stand up in court as transformative.) And they would likely argue that even "merely derivative" fanfic is fair use, as it's not competing with the market value of the original.
I suspect, however, that canonical rights owners would be most likely to take legal action against women writing slash, because that's what's most likely to bother them.
However. The OTW is much more likely to get involved in a case against vidding than fanfic; Paramount and the RIAA have a much more solid history of filing lawsuits against things they don't like than Harper Collins (publisher of Anne Rice, who "forbids" fanfic of her books) does.