this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2026
110 points (92.3% liked)
Technology
80478 readers
3796 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Fan art is not illegal. As long as you're not selling it, it would generally fall under fair use.
Off the top of my head, I know both Disney and Nintendo have sued people for making fan art. Fair use doesn’t explicitly allow you to make fan art, regardless of its transformative nature, and whether or not you owe Disney hundreds of thousands of dollars for drawing Mickey depends on court review on a case-by-case basis because it’s not technically legal in the US. It may also not be technically illegal, but that doesn’t mean a corporation can’t sue you and be awarded millions in civil damages if they think you profited off the art in some way.
A quick google search will source you lawyers saying such.
Just to clarify, somebody suing another party doesn't automatically mean that party broke any laws. Big companies especially will sooner sue the little guy even if they did nothing legally wrong because the know the little guy most likely won't have the resources to fight it, even if they would have won.
Yes, that’s literally what I said. Fan art may not be illegal, but it’s not legal either. The point is moot, however. If a corporation with billions or trillions of dollars can sue you with impunity, while even a meager defense can financially ruin you for life, then there is no practical difference between a legal and illegal act. The fact remains that fighting someone like Disney over something like fanart is beyond the ability of nearly everyone on earth.
Yeah, I was adding onto it. Cool your jets. We're in agreement.
You're right, that was my bad
https://cbaatthebar.chicagobar.org/2022/11/11/the-fine-line-between-fan-art-fan-fiction-and-finding-yourself-sued/
It's copyright infringements but like I said, most won't bother fans not making a dime. There's economic advantages to having fans create and distribute your content for free. A company can choose to copyright strike anything with their characters in it at anytime.
Skimming the article seems to affirm that the danger is profiting off of fan works, not the works themselves. Just because a company can sue you over it (even in situations where you made no profit off of it), that doesn't mean you broke any laws. You can be sued for anything, its up to the court to determine if a law was broken.
Seems pretty clear. It's at the discretion of the owner. The profit aspect doesn't matter in terms of the law, it just makes it likely that companies will go to court over it.
Notice how it says with copyright holders and not with copyright laws.