The present situation:
Fanedit.org cannot post links for fanedits, because this would result in being shut down for copyright infringement. This is currently done by simply by sending a DMCA warning email to a webhost.
There is no lawsuit. No one has been ever arrested for creating a fanedit or for having one in his collection. Youtube and Vimeo delete fanedit trailers, whenever there is a complaint.
Currently fanedits have no right to exist and no law to really forbid them. It’s a grey zone of legality / illegality. It is not the same thing as downloading an original movie (which is just stealing). There is the “fair use” that allows to be creative with copyrighted material within limits. And there is “no money involved”, which is the main reason for no criminal offenses. Faneditors do not intend to earn money or to replace the original. They just add on a small scale to fans, who already know the original.

Now what is the percentage of people to watch a movie twice? And from this number, what is the percentage of people who are interested in watching the movie in a take created by an amateur? As you can see, the scales are super small.

But first things first:
fanediting for yourself is not illegal at all. And how can it be? You alter a copy of something that belongs to you to your liking. And because it does not alter the original no one can and will bother. But when it comes to sharing, things get a bit more delicate, because from the very moment of sharing, a business is entered that declares sharing an issue of true ownership.
Simply put: you must not share, what you are not allowed to give away. Even in its altered form, a fanedit is still a copy of an original and the rights of sharing are reserved to the ones who own the sharing rights of the original. And what happens if you do? Currently: nothing. You shouldn’t, but you will not get punished for doing so, unless you want to earn money with it. and that is because it is not your money. You don’t have the right to earn money with such a thing.

On FANEDIT.ORG we put the faneditors and the audience into responsibility.
The faneditors have of course to own the original and they must never sell their fanedits or give it away to have it sold by others.
The audience has to own the original as well to legaly watch a fanedit. This way there is no harm done, in fact studios are selling more copies than they maybe originally would. In a perfect world this would solve all problems (except for the artistic view, because some people truly mind their movies being tempered with). Unfortunately the reality is that too many people do not follow this rule and through this behavior endanger an artform that is as unique as it gets:
artists create art to enjoy for free, just because they love to share it.

The bigger the fanedit communitys gets, the more the sharing of fanedits will become an issue. Currently with a few exceptions, no fanedit can do any harm at all to the success of an original, because hardly anyone cares. Business is about numbers. And fanedit numbers are super small. No one worries about 100 copies of a fanedit, but in the fanedit community 100 downloads is already a success.

But in cases like Adywan’s STAR WARS REVISITED we are not talking about 100 or 1000 copies. We are talking about millions of copies. So what’s the best way for the studios to handle such a situation? Arrest the faneditor? No, because the fanedit is already out there and he did not earn a single dime with this. Arrest the downloaders? Impossible.
But there is one good solution for them: sell the fanedit themselves. Of course it would be nice to name the faneditor, but even if they don’t, it’s the legal way to have a work of art not just forbidden, but in a place that pleases the audience with what they always want: more.

The future:
is unclear. We here at FANEDIT.ORG are hoping for a companionship with the studios, once fanedits get more popular. Our goal remains the same it always was: to show people the incredible efforts that fans were able to do with original movies. How they created worthy works of art out of their great minds. How business policy can ruin entertainment and creativity can revive it.

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