Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

Post History

60%
+1 −0
Q&A Unofficial Fan Fictions - How can I Secure Them?

If they're on the Internet, someone has a copy of them. They are free now, and you will never have full control of them again. I won't swear to it, but I think when EL James got her book contract...

posted 9y ago by Lauren Ipsum‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

Answer
#4: Attribution notice removed by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-13T12:00:27Z (over 4 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/15920
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T03:58:34Z (over 4 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/15920
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by (deleted user) · 2019-12-08T03:58:34Z (over 4 years ago)
If they're on the Internet, someone has a copy of them. They are free now, and you will never have full control of them again.

I won't swear to it, but I think when EL James got her book contract for the _Fifty Shades_ trilogy, she deleted all the posted versions of those stories (which were after all _Twilight_ fanfic). I seem to recall that older versions were available in various online archives (maybe the Wayback Machine), so deleting them from wherever they were hosted didn't make them go away entirely.

The upshot is that once you make something public, there's no way to completely prevent people from accessing it, and once they can access it, they can plagiarize it.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2015-01-17T20:43:09Z (over 9 years ago)
Original score: 10