donot get angry on me for asking this question. when i visited this forum this doubt aroused first in my mind. is there any chance of copying stories and concepts from this forum. because it is easy here to select the text>copy>paste.
There's totally a risk of people stealing a complete short story if you post it on here. Even if they didn't, you'd struggle getting it published after it had been posted in it's entirety on here. On the other hand, there is negligible danger of concept theft. Anyone, given time and experience, can come up with an idea. The trick is being a good writer, and being determined enough to put potentially years into writing and rewriting a book. These are thankfully not things that can be stolen over the internets, and as such, ideas have little value on their own. Most capable writers would rather write their own stories than someone else's, anyway.
We are a bunch of writers (or let's say people with common love for writing) on here who strive for originality and deal with different genres of writing. I have no reasons to doubt if anyone would attempt to steal. If they do, I bet their conscience will kill that urge before it spawns!
Any writing exposed to the public can be copied. If you're caught distributing it, you can be sued for copyright violation. It really isn't worth anyone's effort to do so - the potential cost is too high, the potential gain is next to nothing. Ideas can't be copyrighted, but writing ideas are worthless anyway. No two writers will give the same treatment to the same idea.
If you post it here, you're dating it. You'll lose first publishing rights, but you're also protecting it from people who want to post it elsewhere. You have proof that it existed earlier than anybody else's copy of it. If, God forbid, I stole a story from you, you could say, "This is my proof that I had it before he did," and it would be a hell of a lot more proof than I would ever have.
You won't necessarily lose first publishing rights. If you post it in a password protected critique area, or if it's posted as a WIP, or if only excerpts are posted, most publishers do not consider that actually being published.
This may seem off topic but is it considered intellectual property when posted anywhere as long as your name or some form of identity is attached to it?
It's considered intellectual property when you finish your first draft in a durable medium, even if you immediately seal it in a safe and sink it into twenty meters of freshly poured concrete. You don't have to show anybody the writing for it to be proitected by copyright. However, you should be prepared to produce an early draft if you have to prove you hold the copyright.
the best, most court-acceptable proof that you wrote something is to save not only your first draft, but also all your little scribbled first idea notes, plus a print-out of an early draft or two that you wrote notes/corrections/additions on, by hand...
As a back up, I have been emailing my work to myself, but I've recently been wondering if this would stand up as evidence in court, because the emails must be dated on my provider's (Virgin) server, and I couldn't fake that.
true... anything electronic can too easily be faked... the progression from the germ of an idea to a polished ms can't be... at least not easily enough for some silly thief/plagiarist to do convincingly...
Exactly. If they are good enough to fake that, they don't NEED to steal writing and risk being blacklisted.
While I agree that concepts are meaningless in terms of novels and short stories because there's so much space to elaborate, I think they become a lot more meaningful in children's picture books where there's a lot less room. For example, I can't imagine someone stealing the concept of "Goodnight Moon" (Where there's a child saying goodnight to everything in his/her room). It wouldn't be plagiarism if the stealing writer used different things in the room, but I think it could prevent the original author from getting published. I think the publishers would say, "It's already been done." Which is, of course, a different story in the world of novels and screenplays. How many stories are out there where a virus turns everyone into zombies?
