Popular fanfic also leads more people to the source material, whether written or filmed. I’ve been into fanfic for ages, and if a favorite writer of mine writes something in a fandom I’m not familiar with, I’ll usually read the fic anyway. If it makes the original book/movie/TVshow/whatever sound interesting, I’ll go looking for it. Frex, I own all the Stargate: Atlantis DVDs because of fanfic; the first couple of episodes didn’t impress me, so I quit watching. Reading fanfic later got me interested again, so I spent money on the DVD seasons. I never watched Blackhawk Down (a movie with lots of eyecandy actors in it) until I read an awesome fanfic based on it. And I’ve watched and/or bought DVDs for movies just because an actor I came to know of and like through RPS was in it. (If you think pornographic slash fiction is something that has to be “admitted,” you probably don’t want to know about RPS. ;D)

The fact is, though, no matter how much fanfic is written, the source material is still there. No one’s stealing or changing the books or movies or TV shows or whatever. No one that I’ve ever heard of stopped reading/watching the source material because the fanfic disappointed, offended or pissed them off. The effect of fanfic on the copyright holder is either null or positive, never negative; it either increases the fan base and sells more books/DVDs/tie-ins, or it does nothing. Sure, the copyright holders have a right to pitch fits if they want to, since everyone’s entitled to their own opinion. But at the same time, their fans (or former fans) have a right to think whatever they think about the fit-pitching copyright holder. [shrug]

Angie