The actual fundraising bribe is a 6/5/4/3 day release schedule for $0/50000/750000/125000 SIAI donation challenge. Not holding chapters hostage or anything, as I was first afraid of.
Copyright law doesn't care about whether this is "monetizing" or not. He's infringing simply by using JK Rowling's characters; he's safe only thanks to JK Rowling saying that she doesn't mind HP fanfiction as long as it's not obscene and non-commercial.
So the only real question here is: What does JK Rowling think of this?
Sure. My point is, this is all based on her whims, not on any legal definitions. So "non-commercial" in this context just means whatever JK Rowling wants it to mean in this context.
Given that it's raising money for a charities, and that the donations only accelerate the publication rate, I would be surprised to see Rowling object when she hasn't objected to previous chapters.
Frustrating: I've been trying for 15 minutes now to make a donation. First, I had to search to find where to make a donation since the announcement didn't include a link. Then the Google Checkout button did not work. Then causes.com sat frozen for over 3 minutes the for getting me a message that there was an unspecified problem with my card. it's a good cause and a great work of fiction so I'm willing to try 1 more time.
I donated, but that's simply because I'm an incredible fan of the work (and most of his writing) - I figure it's my way of 'supporting' him. Wonder if this counts as 'monetizing?
It's the equivalent of Stephen Colbert saying he'll do something silly if people help raise x amount of money for y charity.