I am not too keen on copyright laws and so I guess I'll answer on a more moral ground. I have seen many instances where copyright was just taken too far such as with Jay-Z's Gray Album where he used music from The Beatles and his own lyrics. While even Paul McCartney himself said that he liked the Gray Album and did not feel that it violated any sort of copyright, the company that owned rights to the music ended up trying to sue for it. I mean, if the original artist has no problem with his/her work being used then I do not feel that anybody else has the right to say anything.

However, my ignorance of the law really comes in to play in a situation like this as I understand that The Beatles most likely sold the rights to their music to this company and so the company might have felt like they were losing money on a project that Jay-Z may have been making money on (though I do believe that he offered the Gray Album for free and was thus not making money on it but again I am not entirely sure).

In the end, though my moral philosophy on copyright laws are, "So long as you are not making any money, profit, or even recognition off of another artist's work without the explicit permission of that artist then you are not committing a crime." Now when I say 'recognition' I mean fame and entitlement and not just the broad definition of the word. I have heard, though that some artists, such as Anne Rice is so against people using her work that she has even pressed charges against some sites for allowing fan fiction of her work to be published even though these people were not earning money by posting it.

Whatever happened to imitation being the greatest form of flattery? It is not like these people are trying to make money off of her ideas. They just want to express themselves through her work because they are fans and they respect what she has done as an artist (forgive my usage of the term artist but I use it to refer to musicians, authors, painters, etc.).

Another author who is very much against fan fiction is George R. R. Martin but I have at least not heard of anything where he tried suing for plagiarism because of his work being used in fan fiction (I believe there is even an Ice and Fire RP here on RPG). According to Martin he says that he is against fan fiction because he believes that it is copyright infringement (once again I do not believe that so long as they are not trying to make some sort of profit off of it) and because he feels it is a bad exercise for aspiring writers (which I do agree with).
The way I see it, though is that not everyone who writes wants to do it for a living and would rather only do it for fun. For anyone who writes only for fun I do not see fan fiction hindering them in any way but only furthering their sense of fun. I, however hope to someday become a published writer and I do not like to participate in the fan fiction craze.

Well, that's it. Hope my answer suffices. :)

I'm a fan of copyright of purely artificial things so long as it isn't taken too far (ie. suing little girls for singing along to Kate Perry on Youtube). Copyright in the biological realm, however, has been an unmitigated disaster. There are two examples that come to mind which illustrate this. One is of Monsanto's genetically engineered corn. Since corn is wind pollinated the GMO pollen can fertilize nonGMO crops just by being blown into a neighboring field. Monsanto can then sue that farmer, and has, for selling their copyrighted genes. Then there was the guy in Australia who decided to patent a section of human junk DNA (yes he owns part of YOUR DNA). Fortunately, nature took care of him. He got a mutation in that very same section of junk DNA and died of cancer. Just goes to show: never tempt God's sense of irony. Unfortunately we can not rely on divine humor to remedy every douche who takes it upon themselves to patent the work of evolution (or God, take your pick), therefore, copyright within the biological realm is in need of major reform.