If you haven't felt the compulsion to make fan art, write fan fiction, make your own versions of songs, etc, then it probably doesn't make any sense. Copyright

If you haven't felt the compulsion to make fan art, write fan fiction, make your own versions of songs, etc, then it probably doesn't make any sense. Copyright, even when no profit motive exists on the part of the "fan artist", makes those pursuits technically illegal. (Whether the copyright holder pursues action is a different matter.) The work I like to cite is "The Last Ringbearer"[0]. It's a retelling of the Lord of the Rings and won't see a mass audience any time soon because of copyright law and the Tolkien estate. Contrast that with the success of Wicked[1][2], building on the public domain L. Frank Baum "Wizard of Oz" universe. Both of these works could be created with new characters and universes, but they lose the common cultural lexicon and richness of heritage of the earlier works upon which they're based. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ringbearer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ringbearer] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_(Maguire_novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_(Maguire_novel) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_(musical) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_(musical)