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I think it comes down to a matter of permission and fair use myself. Some authors give permission for fan fictions (J.K.Rowling) and some request others not write fan fics (Anne Rice) and if someone writes fan fictions that violate what the author allows then they are in trouble. And as far as fair use I mean what the writer of the fan fiction gets out of it. They get to improve their writing skills and tell a story that uses characters that they enjoy reading about. If they attempt to sell their work derived from a published work (and all fan fics are derived from published works) and the published work is still in copyright then they can run into some real legal trouble. People wrote fan fics based on Star Trek for years and there are even some fan created video's based on the original series. Paramount doesn't object to the videos (which are available to download online last I knew) because the fans aren't charging anyone anything for them and they realize that the fan's just want to pay homage to a well loved tv series. If however they tried to sell the fan made video's I imagine Paramount's lawyers would be there before you could say "Beam me up."
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