The Codex Alera Community

A friend-of-a-friend is writing her master's thesis on online fanfiction archiving policies. She came across the following in the FF.Net TOS from the early 2000s, and she wasn't clear what it meant:

You agree not to use the service to:
[...]
(i) upload Author Fiction without prior permission from the parties appearing in the story.

I am also not sure what this is referring to! My initial thought, due to 'permission from parties appearing' being required, is that it was something RPF-flavored; maybe fiction about the fan author's own life? Which I vaguely remember being a thing. But I figured I would open it up to the broader crowd also around back then.