the protection of intellectual authorship

[Lino]

My writings are often, the product of risky intrusions (!), and of laborious amateur experiments.
For me, it is essential to raise unexpected new questions in the reader's mind, so that the narrated events must look likely to occur in the real world.

How does this forum ensures us that any person from outside can not steal parts of the texts exposed?

 

[j d worthington]

Try the "Terms of Use" thread in Announcements, specifically the part concerning Copyright, etc.:

http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/10915-terms-of-use.html

 

[TheEndIsNigh]

My writings are often, the product of risky intrusions (!), and of laborious amateur experiments.
For me, it is essential to raise unexpected new questions in the reader's mind, so that the narrated events must look likely to occur in the real world.

How does this forum ensures us that any person from outside can not steal parts of the texts exposed?

Technically there isn't really a way to protect 'intellectual property' ** unless (and even then its messy) you have bottomless pockets and a lifetime to fight your corner.

My experience with this site, say in the critique areas, is that people either post extracts from their work that are 'test pieces' or sections of a main work which could not possibly give too much away about the over all plot of their book.

Obviously this does sometimes happen, but there are usually friendly reminders that publishers sometimes look badly on a book if half of it is freely available in draft form on a forum like this one.

In any case, the 1500 word limit would make it difficult to reveal the delicate intricacies of someone work unless they submitted a chapter by chapter review of their book - and what would be the point of that.

OK, you could introduce 'novel' concepts that you think will make the basis of a good story (this does happen occasionally), but in that case why do it if you intend to write the book yourself.

In general (although this is a free to view site) the people that post on on site are either, up to their neck in their own project, or have no interest in writing at all (although they do like a good argument, read, intellectual challenge etc.)

If you come up with the secret of eternal life (something I do have going on in the nether depths of this site - even as we speak) then the usual 'patent' law applies. Don't reveal your secret before the enough cash has rolled in to enable you to defend the patent.

OK, Black and Decker are good at this but they defend their patents around the world on an almost daily basis.

So my advice is, post, but be aware, this site is publicly available.

** In fact unless you have bottomless pockets, all a patent does is tell your rivals what you are doing and how to do it.

 

[The Judge]

The plain fact is, lino, that we cannot stop people stealing. The Critiques forum is an open one, that is anyone can see it, and we cannot act as a police force tracking down plagiarists. That would, obviously, be the same if you posted it anywhere on the web that is open, or even if you published it in book form.

You, of course, retain copyright in your work, so if someone simply lifts your text and tries to pass it off as his own writing, you can take action -- though as the victims of plagiarism know, that is not always as easy as it sounds. But if someone simply takes an idea of yours, that is another matter -- there is no copyright in ideas as such.

However, for anything other than, possibly, a short story I really don't think it likely that anyone would, or could, take an extract posted here and use it as their own. The most that you can put here at any one time is 1500 words. A fantasy novel may be 100 times that length -- someone who has the ability to write 150,000 words of a novel which then makes money probably doesn't need to rip off other people's ideas.


EDIT: TEiN sneaked in ahead of me again, so I'm just repeating some of what he's said!

 

[Sapheron]

Not meaning to sound cruel, but this is a question many have asked over the years (I have myself, even) and the eventual answer you will reach is that no one could be arsed to steal your work. Almost everyone here is here because they're doing their own work, and they all believe (rightly or wrongly) that it is better than yours because it is our own beloved project and thus as close to faultless as a piece of writing is ever going to be. This may raise the question of why one would post it for critique, or indeed have a critique forum...

 

[slack]

No forum can make that kind of guarantee. If you're worried about being stolen from, don't post your work online.

 

[Lino]

I had access to rare books and paintings, because of my father's books of inventors. The problem of increase human energy. Tesla, Occult Phylosophy. Aggripa,...
That stimulated my imagination since early years.

The point is, if at the end of the process, my exerpts are calified as acceptable; then, my book will be published in electronic format? (Spirit of Edgar Allan Poe, guide my steps ha ha ha,..).
I live in southamerica, E-customers could send the cash to my account?

If something wrong occurs with it, and they find a way to steal my e-book, how i could be really aware of it, to inform the problem to the Administrator?

 

[Pyan]

At the risk of repeating what my colleagues have already said, there is no way we can stop people from passing off posted work as their own.

As it states quite clearly in the Terms and Conditions (which you agreed to when joining the site):

Copyright & Privacy
1. While members are regarded as holding copyright over their own postings, once you post to the public forums, you grant the chronicles network non-exclusive permission to publish the content

As slack says, the only safeguard against intellectual theft from this site or any other is not to post in the first place. If you do, it's at the risk of theft occurring, small as the chances are, and we can not take any responsibility whatsoever. I hope this makes it clear.

 

[youngidealist]

Hi, I'm new and I'll be completely upfront. I came to this forum because it was the first sci-fi forum I found at the top of a Google search and I am hoping to get feedback, critique, and hopefully readership of my material by being a part of this community. I'm also attempting to piggyback the SEO success of the site for those purposes.

This is my first post for this forum, so here it goes. I, for one, am more worried about not being historically recognized as the first to come up with a new genre of sci-fi than I am worried about missing out on money. People, especially the geeks that I intend to attract to my writing, love a genuine article, the original, the real creator of their dreams.

As long as wikipedia gets it right (which we all know that they don't always do) when your work was first posted, what your work is as well as the fact that it is yours, will be remembered forever. Money is easy to gain from your work, especially when people want your first editions and will travel far to meet you at a book signing (I speak with the experience of being such a fan and I often consider cashing such things out on ebay).

IOW, I think what really matters, both personally and economically, in this biz is geekcred. It's for that reason that I decided to blog my novels as I make them. I had heard about a successful sci-fi author, on the podcast Skepticality, who actually podcasted his novel as a pdf file. He slowly worked on it and changed it until it was perfected with all of the feedback he got for it. By the time it was complete, he had a readership following that blew editors out of the water, scrambling to figure out why they had never heard of him. It's worth thinking about.

 

[mtzGr]

Hi, I'm new and I'll be completely upfront. I came to this forum because it was the first sci-fi forum I found at the top of a Google search and I am hoping to get feedback, critique, and hopefully readership of my material by being a part of this community. I'm also attempting to piggyback the SEO success of the site for those purposes.

This is my first post for this forum, so here it goes. I, for one, am more worried about not being historically recognized as the first to come up with a new genre of sci-fi than I am worried about missing out on money. People, especially the geeks that I intend to attract to my writing, love a genuine article, the original, the real creator of their dreams.

As long as wikipedia gets it right (which we all know that they don't always do) when your work was first posted, what your work is as well as the fact that it is yours, will be remembered forever. Money is easy to gain from your work, especially when people want your first editions and will travel far to meet you at a book signing (I speak with the experience of being such a fan and I often consider cashing such things out on ebay).

IOW, I think what really matters, both personally and economically, in this biz is geekcred. It's for that reason that I decided to blog my novels as I make them. I had heard about a successful sci-fi author, on the podcast Skepticality, who actually podcasted his novel as a pdf file. He slowly worked on it and changed it until it was perfected with all of the feedback he got for it. By the time it was complete, he had a readership following that blew editors out of the water, scrambling to figure out why they had never heard of him. It's worth thinking about.

You should make a reality television show about your journey to become famous, tons of people watch that kind of ****.

 

[Sleepless]

Hi, I'm new and I'll be completely upfront. I came to this forum because it was the first sci-fi forum I found at the top of a Google search and I am hoping to get feedback, critique, and hopefully readership of my material by being a part of this community. I'm also attempting to piggyback the SEO success of the site for those purposes.

This is my first post for this forum, so here it goes. I, for one, am more worried about not being historically recognized as the first to come up with a new genre of sci-fi than I am worried about missing out on money. People, especially the geeks that I intend to attract to my writing, love a genuine article, the original, the real creator of their dreams.

As long as wikipedia gets it right (which we all know that they don't always do) when your work was first posted, what your work is as well as the fact that it is yours, will be remembered forever. Money is easy to gain from your work, especially when people want your first editions and will travel far to meet you at a book signing (I speak with the experience of being such a fan and I often consider cashing such things out on ebay).

IOW, I think what really matters, both personally and economically, in this biz is geekcred. It's for that reason that I decided to blog my novels as I make them. I had heard about a successful sci-fi author, on the podcast Skepticality, who actually podcasted his novel as a pdf file. He slowly worked on it and changed it until it was perfected with all of the feedback he got for it. By the time it was complete, he had a readership following that blew editors out of the water, scrambling to figure out why they had never heard of him. It's worth thinking about.

That sounds sensible as a way to protect your work..

Generally though, I do not think that you can both actively seek feedback on a specific portion of your novel AND guarantee your story idea stays yours. I do not think there is much point in stealing someone elses idea though - I really do not think it is that much of an issue. I could write the next Game of Thrones book with some amazing twists (Dany would die on page 1) but it would suck . What makes a story live is the author, how they write, how they grab your attention, how the characters develop etc. In my opinion, the basic premise is rarely that much of an issue.

 

[TheEndIsNigh]

Sleepless: Although people have been re-writing LOR for decades now and they seem fly off the book shop's shelves.

In fact a mere mention of

"The best book since Tolkien was a lad"

seems to be all that is required for an author to sell thousands of books.

Even if it's a cookery book.

"The Lord of the Rings Cook Book"

Or

Rare and Black again

By

The Two Hairy Halflings​

Er....


Back in about six months.

 

[J Riff]

Heehee.
If you are a good enough writer you will be hacked and it will be stolen off your PC.
People used to put text on a disc then mail it registered, twice, to themselves. This should technically do the trick, but I gave up ages ago and just send it to publishers instead. Hopefully, they buy it and problem solved.

 

[TheEndIsNigh]

Of course, it goes without saying that the book will be full of recipes for 'Pies'

 

[Brian G Turner]

How does this forum ensures us that any person from outside can not steal parts of the texts exposed?

Frankly, we can't.

However, we limit what people can post to only a brief excerpt, so there's unlikely to be anything to steal.

Really, the protection of IP is entirely the writer's concern, until such point as these rights are signed over to a publisher.

 

[The Judge]

The point is, if at the end of the process, my exerpts are calified as acceptable; then, my book will be published in electronic format?...
I live in southamerica, E-customers could send the cash to my account?

If something wrong occurs with it, and they find a way to steal my e-book, how i could be really aware of it, to inform the problem to the Administrator?

I wonder if perhaps you are confusing a number of different things, lino.

Firstly, we are happy to help you in improving your writing skills, and Critiques is one place for this as and when you achieve 30 counted posts. However, as we've said, you can only post 1500 words at a time, which is nowhere near enough for anyone else to steal your work as a whole -- no one could take a scene and write your identical novel from it.

Some members have in the past given a brief outline of their plots in General Writing Discussion in the hope of getting feedback, either in order to improve the plot, or to see if is sounds credible, or simply to gauge possible readers' reactions. That clearly does provide a literary thief with something to steal, though, again, I don't think it is likely that many people are hanging around looking for such ideas so they can write a long novel in the hope it might earn them millions -- there are many quicker and surer ways of making money. However, if you believe that the unique philosophy or world behind your work is so marvellous that others will want to copy it, then it would be foolish in the extreme to put full details here or indeed anywhere else until such time as your book is published, whether in traditional or ebook form.

However, you do realise that we do not help in publishing the book in any way, don't you? While you can put some excerpts here, and members might individually agree to read the whole of your novel and offer help, whether it is published or not has nothing to do with SFFChronicles. That is entirely up to you, and whatever happens to the book afterwards is also entirely up to you and/or your publishers. How you might find out about possible plagiarism of your book will depend on luck, I imagine -- someone reading the other person's novel and noticing its similarity to your own.

But if someone does plagiarise your ebook then that is nothing to do with SFFChronicles and there is simply no question of your contacting the "Administrator" or anyone else here. The only possible way we could be involved is if a member posted an extract here which you claimed was in breach of your copyright, in which case the moderators would investigate your claim and possibly take action.

 

[TheTomG]

Whenever you share an idea or actual work, you risk theft. Post it on a forum (this, or any one), send it in an email, print it for a friend to read, discuss it over a pint in the pub, talk about it on the bus,etc.

It is up to yourself as the author to decide whether that risk is worth it, to weigh up the pros and cons, and pick how much (if anything) to share, no matter how you choose to share it. Even publishing your book is a chance to have your stolen, some one could grab your ebook and go sell it elsewhere, etc.

There are no guarantees in life, so do make your decisions accordingly in terms of your own risk / benefit analysis!