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Also, while this isn't true in the case of Dune, allowing such creations indeed *can* take money out of the pockets of the copyright holders. Consider, for example, PernMUSH, which is allowed to operate by special permission of Anne McCaffery. Now, suppose some compnay wants to make a Pern MMOG with a heavy RP emphasis... the existance of a free PernMUSH is a direct competition to them. So in such a case McCaffery may indeed want to shut down the fan-made version.
But it gets worse, in that you can't necessarily just assume to let the fan-made version run until such an offer comes along. If you let it run over time, it builds up its own base of loyal users. Shutting down a long-running RP world would create more negative feelings than if it had simply never been allowed to exist. A company looking to do an MMOG may just decide it's not worth the effort to try a Pern one since PernMUSH is already out there, even if McCaffery were willing to shut it down.
And times change. 25 years ago, allowing a text of a book on the Internet wouldn't have cost an author anything. But now that ebooks are hot, and those rights are worth something, the pre-existance of a full copy of the book on the Internet that was previously allowed now makes the ebook rights to that book virtually worthless.
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