By Slanted Light

My comment will default on the side of free choice, so I suppose I'll be the rebel here!
Lol - not at all! I tend to assume that everything defaults to free choice, what I'm interested in is why people make those choices, whether they'll work considering their environment and context, and so on. There's always free choice as far as I'm concerned - do people make the best free choices, though? We make choices all the time, and luckily most of the people in Pros fandom are free to make whichever ones they want - but whether they're good choices for other people is another question...

I understand that people feel like they're not infringing if they don't make money.
Hmmn - I've never really thought that this was the case, to be honest - I thought it was more of a legal infringement that revolves around payment for something that's been copyrighted/trademarked, and any moral infringement is a completely different argument that generally ends up with someone saying "but there are only so-many stories in the world, so at some point we're all infringing on someone else's ideas...".

That doesn't bother me either because I only worry about me and my actions.
Well, I could quote Martin Niemöller here, but I won't... I think there is a point at which we need to worry about what's going on in the wider world, where ever that might be...

I don't feel an iota of jealousy or outrage when I see fanart selling for a thousand dollars at an auction
No, I don't feel jealous either, but I will admit to feeling somewhat upset that there are parts of fandom where commercialism has intruded over the fannish gift-economy, which is one of the things I prize most about the fannish world. In a place where the vast majority of people create and share and give purely because it makes people happy, I think it's a shame that other people want to take advantage of the love we have for our characters, and make money from it. It's bringing what I think are the worst parts of the "real world" to somewhere I felt was above that.

Zines are in a huge decline... They'll be gone soon enough, as will the CDs and downloads from the looks of things. So in the end, it will work out one way or the other by people using their buying power.
Well, I'm not sure that it has to come down to "buying power" you see - I like the idea that there are other factors at play in fandom. People write stories, create art and vids, and share it freely with each other in fandom - that has nothing to do with buying power. Many publishers have produced zines without making any profit, some have purely given them away, others sell them at what is basically cost, some say that if there is any profit when they finally close their publishing "house", that it will be given to charity. Others, however, seem to be bent on making money by charging prices that do not reflect the price of creation. I've put together "e-zines" - it takes time, it takes care and effort, but that's what fans give to fandom all the time, for free, for the joy of it. What makes those few zine publishers different?