If you're not selling fanart, a ban on fanart doesn't effect you one way or the other.
At Otakon there is no limitation on bringing anything not fanart, and people who don't do fanart aren't limited in any way, shape, or form. If you sell entirely original content, you weren't limited in anyway. It was why a lot of people upped their original content (Which is, admittedly, a BIG plus of limits, for me anyway) If you didn't sell fanart, you weren't punished at all, and those rules didn't have anything to do with you. As Enigma said, the limit is only to products featuring licensed characters.
My issues with limiting stock is that it's easy to cheat in multiple ways, as you saw at Otakon. It was really frustrating that my group stuck to their guns, cut down our stock, and then got there to find multiple tables clearly selling more then 200 pieces of fanart.
And when you limit by item numbers instead of by cash, the first things to go are buttons, stickers, etc. Cause if I'm there to sell my art, I want people to buy my art, and where as I know 200 stickers, buttons, etc will sell fast, I'd rather cut those out, so I can bring actual art. I, personally, find it unfair to the con goers who want to collect artist buttons, but...if I'm forced to choose between my art, and my buttons...I'm in an Artist Alley.
The only way the rules was hard to understand, and the only loophole to take advantage of was "What is fanart" and banning fanart doesn't get rid of that. (Enforcement, however, is hard because it's such an easy rule to cheat)
And I'm copy/pasting something I said in the Otakon boards, so if this seems familiar, I'm sorry, but it seems relevant:
And really I think the point is...AAs are place...not limited to but with the general idea of fans sharing fannished themed art, whether it's original or not. If you had nothing to do with fandom and didn't like and draw inspiration from it, an AAs not exactly the place for you, and there are many, many better suited places. Which is why you don't see, say, a lot of post impressionistic or harlem renaissance inspired painting in the AA. Fandom is a wide term, we were sandwiched between an artist who had almost all American Superhero art, and an artist who did Gothic Lolita fashion, and those are pretty far apart, but both fit there perfectly. However, I think saying fanart doesn't belong in an AA....that's the point of it. It's great that it can be fluid and move past that as well, but that's what it's for, is a place for geeky artist to geek together and geek to customers who they might not be able to connect with in a more formal art gallery setting.
And even a lot of the original art we sold, and people around us were selling, had themes that people were familiar (Steampunk, Mucha/art nouveau, gothic lolita, etc) so guest weren't even going that far out on a limb with original stuff. That doesn't have to do with the limit rules, but it's a dangerous slope to start pointing finger about originality based on subject matter and not art quality. (And I saw original things that lacked any creativity and fanart things that were mind blowingly creative).
(edited to clarify a sentence that made no sense)
Also edited to add in this so I don't double post:
People can cheat with a sales chart. But if you set a cap at $2000 you both set the companies at rest, and give you artist plenty of lee way. And although people can cheat, it's the same thing we have to do for the IRS, and they probably have a lot more stock in it. And just like the IRS if something smell fishy, you can audit someone, tell them not to empty their tills till the end of the weekend, etc.
