Sure there are those cases. It's not that I intended to discredit the writers of fanfiction, on the contrary. It's all up to the author.
I've written 7 chapters of my book now and am well on the way to writing more. I've been reading different articles, some saying that under UK law copyrighting isn't a big deal, and others saying that you should do it by posting a sealed copy to yourself (even though others have rubbished this idea). All I want is a straightforward answer, which I can't seem to find ANYWHERE. Do I need to copyright my book at any point before sending it to a Publishing House, and if so, how do I do it? Thank you
Copyright comes into existence automatically upon creation of the work in tangible form (e.g. a writing). Posting a sealed copy to yourself isn't really worth a whole lot, at least not in the States. Probably not in the UK, either, for similar reasons. A publisher will generally take care of registering the copyright for you, so there is no need to go through that process prior to submission.
Thank you! So when you send it to a Publisher, there's no chance of them suddenly keeping it, claiming it was never mine etc? I literally just need to write the story, send it to them and they'll deal with the rest?
A reputable publisher isn't going to do that. They're not in the business of stealing works and ruining their reputations. If you're submitting to an unknown agent or publisher, it's worth doing some research to find out just who you are dealing with. You can look, for example, on pred-ed.com and see what it says about them there.
It's a tough one I'd say calling out someone for ripping off. On one hand a writer might be unequivocally unaware that the heart of their work exists in another guise yet on the other there'll be a shyster cursing themselves for not being discreet enough with their plagiarism. Both works I guess would be tainted equally despite any protestations. With the former, the honest and unaware writer, I'd say that once a story starts to well and the urge to write comes;as eager as they are they, should stay themselves a moment, hit Google, sound out some well-read friends and drill into their own subconscious too for the ideation. There's a form of de facto prudence nowadays with inventors (the less naive ones at least); they avoid needless perspiration by deft and stealthy investigation (no rhyme intended), ensuring their ideas are novel. The rise of the internet has greatly simplified this challenge. They are aware of their creativity and value it more than their skills with the more mundane process of realisation. A leaf from their books to be taken? A third thing to consider, or more a point of observation: quite often an environment/event/trend sparks a story and more than one will be influenced by it—that's when two or more similar works seem to appear simultaneously. Here the critics then cast their aspersions on the unwitting. Other than being borgishly in the mind of everyone, there's not much I reckon anyone could do about that. Lastly, seven billion people knocking about here on earth and a lot of folks too who've had the prior privilege. They say everyone's got a book in them, that's a lot of books for originality to sidestep. If you can't get niche get nuance—and do it well.
You could always email yourself an attached copy of the word document. I think the reason for this is, if someone comes out claiming they wrote your book, you can use the emailed copy as proof that you wrote it before they did since it will be time stamped when it was sent. Now a days its really hard for people to get away with plagiarism since you work is time stamped on the computer (when it was created)
All someone has to do is change the time and date on the clock on their computer. At least with email you should have the server's time stamp.
My go-to advice for writers who are worried about plagiarizing: If you feel tempted to copy something in a story - a character detail, plot detail, setting detail... - then that means that you like that detail of the story, and now you should look for details to dislike about the same story (no matter how much it feels like you're making a big deal about "problems" that don't actually matter). If you can't come up with ways of fixing the parts of the story that you don't like, then those parts will leave a bad taste in your brain and you won't want to copy the good parts as much. If you do come up with ways of fixing the parts of the story that you didn't originally like, then you're still not "copying" the good parts that you already liked, you are making them even better than they were in the original.
I'm going to disagree, you don't need to find items you don't like in order to justify borrowing items you do like. So, in a very Hypatia moment my MC flings a bloody rag at the male lead. Whoop-de-doo. She's not Greek or a mathematician or remaining single thanks to the good graces of her father. Who cares if I like or dislike Hypatia's story? I also have a Madame Defarge moment (but I will admit to hating a Tale of Two Cities, though I generally like Dickens.) Why bothering wondering if there are parts of that story that could be fixed when my characters are not in the middle of the French Revolution (or even a political uprising)? If something inspires you, go for it. When writing, who wants to stop in the midst of an inspiring moment to go pull a book of the shelf and look to see if there is anything in that story you don't like? If you are well read, you will recognize similarities in works all the time. After all, there is nothing new under the sun. In fact you can even re-write Hypatia's story and tell the whole thing again if you like. It's no longer copyrighted! How many versions of Romeo & Juliette are out there? Beauty & the Beast? Cutting & Pasting is another problem altogether. Unless it's research material, you shouldn't even have a book in your hand while you write. Even if you rephrase something it needs to be cited and citations look silly in novels.
Hey we're all influenced by one thing or another. Where it technically counts as plagiarism is when content is literally lifted and dumped into your own work. My take is that it's damn hard to think of a plot idea that hasn't already been done in some way that resembles it. Characters, however, are all reflections of ourselves and thus are all unique (If they're written well). I've always thought that true originality comes from writing great characters, not great plots. Just my two cents
There's an author out there fighting for this. She writes heterosexual M/F fiction. Some "author" has taken all her books and quite literally, re-written them but changed the characters to gay males. She obviously thought anyone reading M/F love stories, wouldn't be interested in M/M love stories. She was wrong.
So, last year I did some actual creative writing in a crowdsourced universe I helped build in a text-based wiki-roleplaying game. At the time it was a diversion, a little bit of playing around while I gave my main project a rest (actually that's what it still is). I figured that like anything based out of an online game, it probably wasn't going to go very far. Problem....the writing group freaking loved it. Like several of them tried to talk me into abandoning my main project and focussing on it. That's not going to happen, but I digress... The point is that the world works as a fictional universe REALLY well. And that's potentially bad because the original game, including the parts I wrote, are under a Creative Commons license like everything else on Wikia. So, in theory, I can write in the world all I want and publish content based on it - but since it's copylefted I can't copyRIGHT it. Which could be a problem submitting any stories loosely based in that reality to publications that copyright their material. So, the question then becomes how to handle content that I wrote, but which I wrote as submissions to a copylefted game that I wasn't originally planning to use for actual fiction. How different would I have to make the world before I can plausibly have something pitchable? The high concept would hold water even if I change a bunch of stuff, but certain things would have to stay roughly the same to work properly.
There are many different versions of the Creative Commons Licence. What you can do with the work you created depends a lot on what specific version of the CC licence applies to the work you used in yours. It is possible to copyright material and sell it if (e.g.) the work is under a Creative Commons Attribution Licence - all you woud have to do is credit the original author(s). If it's under a non-commercial share-a-like licence then possibly you cannot. One option is the fifty shades of grey method - simply remove the copyrighted bits to leave something that is 100 yours.
The page at present is under a CC-BY-SA license http://www.wikia.com/Licensing Wikias Using the CC-BY-SA license To grow the commons of free knowledge and free culture, all users editing or otherwise contributing to wikias that use the CC BY-SA license agree to grant broad permissions to the general public to re-distribute and re-use their contributions freely for any purpose, including commercial use, in accordance with the CC BY-SA license. Such use is allowed where attribution is given and the same freedom to re-use and re-distribute applies to any derivative works of the contributions. By editing or otherwise contributing to a wikia that uses the CC BY-SA license, you agree to license any text you change or contribute under the CC BY-SA license.
So there are some limitations there - and I'm not sure I would even be able to assert copyright over the pieces of the text I created myself. So the question then becomes, if I can't actually use the the worldbuilding info from here, how far do I have to go away from it before it's not copyleft infringement? The pieces I wrote dealt with an alt-history civilization founded by the Selk'nam Native American culture at the tip of South America. So if I change the surrounding history but still have a Selk'nam civilization that looks roughly similar - is that infringing? My main character's name is Praxedes - named after another Praxedes who was a queen in the alt-history - is that infringement? She's named Praxedes because Praxedes is a ridiculously common name in that timeline - so is the idea the Praxedes is a common name infringement? If Queen Praxedes ends up in Scotland instead of Wales where she went in the game - is that still infringement because it's an obvious ripoff with minor changes? Don't worry about answering all of those rhetorical questions - I'm just brain-vomiting. If I ever write anything serious in the universe I may just try to figure out who hold the license and see if I can get them to release the page into the public domain....I really don't think they'd care. But then I'd have to figure out who holds the license on a page with like 40 contributors. Oh well, write first, ask questions later.
I am not a lawyer. But, my understanding is that if the licence is BY-SA, then you can use your material for commercial purposes. However, so can anyone else. You own the copyright for your contributions, but they are released to the public under the CC licence. (That's what the SA bit says.) If you want a publisher to publish your work, then the licencing may be a problem as they won't have exclusivity. It shouldn't stop you self-publishing, however. But, see the disclaimer at the start of this post.
I'm with @DefinitelyMaybe, right up to the part where I'm not a lawyer, either. But it seems to me as if you can use these ideas any way you want to. And I can't see why the work you produce later, the work that wouldn't be posted on the wiki, wouldn't be copyrightable. So it's kind of like you'd be drawing from a public domain idea - say, vampires. Nobody has a copyright on vampires, so anyone can use them for anything. But once you write something about vampires, that new writing is copyrighted, for itself. It doesn't affect the use of vampires by others, but any new stuff you add would be copyrighted. (Bearing in mind, of course, that ideas cannot be copyrighted, only the expression of those ideas. As I understand it.)
I don't see why you can't use the content you created and do whatever you want with it. You just can't stop others using the content you created and disseminated under the license. So, while you can write in the world using the elements of the world that you created and arguably not be subject to the terms of the creative commons license yourself, anyone else can write using the elements that you created for the world as well. The difference is the other person would be bound by the creative commons license. If you incorporate other people's creations into your work, then you're bound by the license too.
I think it depends on [1] whether there are settings and characters that the OP has used in their own work. The law concerning characters is tricky, and depends on which country's laws It also depends on whether [2] the OP's work can be seen as a derivative work of the CC licenced work. Again it's complicated, and depends on which country's laws we are looking at. I mentioned further up that it may be possible to extract the OP's original contributions and remove and replace the copyrighted bits. However, it's hard to say to what degree that is possible without knowing both the original material and what the OP has created.
If the OP is using all of his own source material, then he/she shouldn't be subject to the license and so it wouldn't matter if it is a derivative work. A license agreement binds licensees, and you're not a licensee with respect to your own original creation (unless you've assigned the rights away and licensed them back, I suppose). I think the real concern here is incorporating other people's work, and the fact that anyone else can start using the OP's own contributions (or derivatives thereof) based on the license.
The questions is whether the OP is using copyrighted material created by others. And whether the OP's work is a derivative work of something created by others. If the OP extracts only his own material, discarding anything (e.g. characters and settings) created by others, then that shouldn't be a problem. However, if characters, settings, and other factors created by others are used in the OP's work, then there may be a problem.
