User:Cja2023/sandbox

Kudos and Comments
In addition to sharing fan fiction and original work, Archive of Our Own users can also interact with posted materials. Like many other online platforms, readers with AO3 accounts can leave comments on any publication, leaving reviews, sharing reactions, engaging with other readers and often the author, themselves.

Readers can also give stories kudos, which function similarly to likes or hearts on other sites; kudos are permanent and cannot be taken back. Added in 2010, the kudos feature, however, has been negatively received by various AO3 authors who claim that the simple act of leaving a 'like' discourages the reader from interacting further with the author's work through leaving comments or reviews. In fact, in 2012, a number of authors banded together with the shared goal of creating an 'opt out' feature that allows authors on AO3 to remove the kudos feature from their published works.

Copyright and Fair Use
Because the contexts in which we see fan fiction are very different from the context of traditional literary publishing, it is difficult to hold the former to the same legal standards that we might apply to the latter. While readers of fan fiction expect to consume content featuring their favorite previously established and corporately owned characters, readers of professionally published fiction expect to consume content featuring original characters creations. With these opposing contexts and expectations in mind, arguments can be made that fan fiction is both an act of copyright infringement and fair use.

When it comes to AO3, specifically, all fan fiction published through the site is largely protected through the Fair Use doctrine, despite the fact that US Copyright Law only grants the author of the original publication the right to create any derivative works. The legal team working on behalf of Organization for Transformative Works has stated that the publication of fan fiction on AO3 is entirely legal so long as it is “transformative.” This means that the fan fiction author utilizing elements of another’s original work must contribute new content with new meaning to whatever it is that they are looking to publish on AO3. Likewise, fan fiction published on AO3 is expected to be “noncommercial” – the author cannot legally make any money off of their fan fiction because they are using another author’s characters, setting, etc.

While AO3's nonprofit status protects it from commercializing works of fan fiction, not every published work may qualify as transformative and is to be handled on a case-by-case basis. There is currently no singular, concrete answer regarding if the publication of fan fiction, as a whole, adequately constitutes Fair Use or not.