Intellectual rights?

[sojourner]

I am curious. When posting fan fiction on a BBS such as this, what intellectual rights are you surrendering? Can you still submit for publishing? will a publisher take something that has been posted on a BBS? Obviously, using an established property as Star Trek for a setting has it's own limitations, but I was thinking in more generic terms of the effects of posting submissions in a public space.

 

[Mistral]

Unless you post a "sole property, may not be reprinted" type of warning with the piece in question you are wide open to being copied, shared etc. I couldn't say what an editor would/wouldn't take-you might ask the pros over in Trek Lit thread.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

Looks like you're a Piers Anthony fan, to judge from your title. I asked him that question once via e-mail, and he seemed to think that the fact that something had been posted on the Internet would not be reason enough for all publishers to turn down something they liked. Other authors answer that differently, though, so I wouldn't take any one author's statement on that as gospel.

 

[wew]

You still own the rights to your fan fiction, however, it doesn't necessarily preclude others from also using it. Formal copyrighting provides extra protection, according a friend of mine who was a patent/copyright/trademark lawyer.

 

[trampledamage]

I guess it's up to the publisher about whether they'd care that it's already been on an internet forum. If I remember correctly, the Strange New Worlds contest rules specifically said that posting a story in a public forum on the internet counted as it having been published and that story was therefore ineligible for the contest.

 

[captcalhoun]

as far as i'm aware, you have no IP rights when doing fan-fiction.

 

[sojourner]

OK, I will take the word "fan" out of the question. Now can you give a reply that more reflects the question?

 

[captcalhoun]

well, if you mean: if i post my new novel on here, what's to stop someone stealing it?

then the answer, bluntly is: fuck all.

henc why i don't go around posting stuff i want to retain the copyright to on public fora like this.

(no offence, fellow fan-fic writers)

 

[Mistral]

None taken. (Looking over his shoulder to make sure no one is watching him, Mistral slyly pockets a "u" and an "m" from Calhoun's post, leaving behind a cheap and flimsy "a" in their place.) You can't be too careful, even in this forum.

 

[captcalhoun]

i wasn't just referring to this forum. i was referring to others as well. and the correct plural of forum is fora.

 

[RevdKathy]

Actually, you can stick a copyright notice on the bottom of anything you post. Won't stop people using it, but you retain legal right to it.

For eample, all my Teddy Bear's stories say "All Worry's stories are copyright by Rev K Smith (cos bears can't hold copyright) but permission is granted for use in a non-commercial setting." That way, if anyone else tries to publish them and make money off them, I have a legal right to raise hell. But if someone wants to read 'em in Sunday school to the kids, I'd be quite happy.

 

[think]

"You know your rights when your right in the know." - Think

so people like to horde their ideas - ok - but why? If 'we' continue to grow along these negative pack rat - like, lines then we might forget what we are hording ., but hey these ideas that are horded hold nothing a few good rounds of shock treatment with LSD exposure would not resolve thus allowing us to copy said Industrial mythos.., what is the plural of mythos or is that plural already? and why are such secrete's horded? .,?

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Anything you create is your copyright. However, when you create a derivative work based on someone else's copyrighted material, you are essentially at their mercy when it comes to making any money from it. Musicians who sampled mere seconds of another band's work without prior clearance have found themselves stripped of all royalties and publishing rights. So it goes with fanfic, too.

If it's original fiction (or any other original kind of art), it's your copyright whether you register or not. Registration makes things easier if you ever need to sue someone for infringement, but US copyright law provides that you need not do anything special to copyright your work and have legal protection for it.

All rights are reserved by default. If you post something on your own website, with no notice of what rights you do and don't reserve, you are indicating others may peruse your work but may not copy it (beyond downloading pages from your site), derive works from it, or commercially exploit it. If you post on a public forum owned by a third party, your work is governed by the terms of service of that site, which you agreed to beforehand.

Many publishers (not necessarily all) want "first publication" rights, meaning they want stuff that has never been published anywhere--including the Internet. If your work has enough commercial potential, they may overlook this. It is also not totally unheard of for someone to self-publish a book and have it sell well enough to get the attention of a major publishing house.