[Yapyap]

Of course, people taking their previously-posted fanfic and then publishing it for profit (after doing a quick find-and-replace on character names) seems to be completely legal, unlike the grey area of posting non-profit fanfic free on the Internet... so even that is not really an argument against fanfic.

After all, there is no way to stop people from writing a story as fanfic, find-and-replacing all the names and then publishing it - it only requires for the story itself to be sufficiently original and different from the source material. If the person who wrote the story as fanfic and then reconsiders and replaces the names and publishes it as original fiction, skipping the step of posting it on a fanfic archive first, it's not like anyone would even know it was born as fanfic (and it's a certainty that plenty of perfectly fine published novels have their origins in someone else's world).

I have recently come across cases of people selling their Star Trek or Stargate fanfic as self-published novels. This does not sit well with me and is against what I personally believe to be ethical. It would be interesting to see if anything is done about that; big studios would certainly have the means for a proper lawsuit. I don't think there's been a single case of even for-profit fanfic going to court, though (the Harry Potter Lexicon is a different case, not having anything to do with fanfic but being pretty much entirely a compendium of direct quotes and material from the Harry Potter books).

The overwhelming majority of people involved with fanfic in the various fandom communities I've been part of over the years don't consider it a good idea to profit from fanfic; there is the occasional case of people donating to keep an archive running, using ads to keep archives running, and participating in fandom auctions for charity causes (in which the author of a fanfic never profits from her/his work), but to many, even that is too much of a grey area to feel morally comfortable with. "Not for profit" is a major rule and belief for most fans involved with fanfic.

ETA: Actually, I guess the case against The Wind Done Gone does probably qualify as an example of the rights holders suing the publisher of what could be considered as a for-profit fanfic. Of course, that ended with a settlement and the book being published (under the "parody" clause), so... I'm not sure exactly how many conclusions one can draw from that, except to say that these aren't completely clear-cut matters?