Too paranoid about intellectual property to receive reviews...

I don't publish stuff that I put here. What I put here, stays here.

But even if I do, I wouldn't worry about plagiarism. If the other guy copies my idea too similarly, he gets sued. If he doesn't, then, well, why would I care?

Of course, I can't actually remember the last time I saw real plagiarism in a published book. It just doesn't happen... if he steals your idea and copies it completely, the publisher he approaches will laugh at him and boot him out of the room with an almighty kick(publishers wear spiked boots for this very reason).

 

I would try not to worry. As a teacher, I know that students often plagiarize, and the thought occasionally occurs to me (especially as I am making one of my 'Notes' in Facebook - and an English teacher on my f-list warned me not to post my ideas on FB, and I think she was afraid students on my f-list would take them.) Ugh I ramble. The best way to circumvent this is to post excerpts only. People might steal only part of an idea, then, but they'd have to go to the trouble of rewriting and building around it themselves, and this is usually too much trouble for a cheater, I think. Anyway, if they rewrote it, it would end up being their own work, in the end, it would grow and change too much to really be yours anymore.

Anyway, that is how I reason it out. Sorry so long and wordy! Hope this helps.

 

Computers remember every keystroke. If a guy steals from me, then he just paid off my house. I have both a criminal and a civil attorney, and trust me, they will extract every ounce of revenge.

 

can you really sue someone for stealing an IDEA? especially if your book isn't published yet? How could you prove someone stole your idea and didn't just get the same briliant idea by himself?

 

Servers have dates, and the tens of thousands of members and lurkers on the www are potential witnesses. How stupid would you have to be to steal something in that venue? It would be like committing a crime under a surveillance camera. And once a case goes to court, it's public record, and I'd make sure the trial was posted in the guy's home town.

Edit: BTW, my story began to be written in 1979. It will be easy to prove theft if the guy is in his twenties.

 

Ideas cannot be copyrighted. Only the specific expression of an idea is covered under copyright, whether it be a photograph, a blueprint, a painting, an essay, a poem, a story, etc.

By itself, the idea is worthless, unless it is unique enough to warrant a patent application.

If you think the idea itself has merit, don't post it. However, chances are it is worth a lot less than you think - to anyone other than yourself, that is.

 

Oh, I'm sure you're right, but that's not the real damage in the long run.

There are lots of guys who couldn't come up with a original thought if it was written on their foreheads. These guys damage anyone's chances of doing something nice because they'll sour the milk for someone else' creative ideas.

 

Well, if he copies my work too similarly, anyway.

If he uses the exact same sentence in the exact same context... yeah. I'll drag him to court.

 

I was actually going to reference this since you said something similar in another thread. Basically that ideas are worthless and that it's what you do with them that counts.

There are TONS of stories out there with nearly identical premises, but that doesn't make them the same story. I've seen Hunger Games and Battle Royale and I can assure you that the people who claim that Hunger Games is a copy of Battle Royale are the people who never read/saw them both. Don't worry about someone writing a story with the same premise as yours. Chances are, your story isn't the first one to use that premise either, regardless of whether or not you picked it up from anywhere.

 

i'm late to this but im the same. Lately i've been writing a lot of fan fiction (a GTA story) and it went down really well on another site. I'm not worried someone will steal that, as it's not technically my intelectaual property, but when i upload original works?
I've got two concepts at the moment which, when done, i may post a preview up here, or other websites, but at that point if i want to get it published it'll be short preview - i think thats the way to do it. Short stories, and poetry are slightly different but a full on novel? I share that paranoia. If you novel is finished and you're looking for publishing, then the advice above about showing bits of it to friends or people you know won't steal it is the way to go.

How to get over it: i would say not to post entire works, or your concept. For feedback show a chapter or two to someone, or upload a few passages. Once it's published though, you needn't worry about it as it'll be copyrighted, wont it?

 

it's already copyrighted!... has been, from the moment it was finished... you need to learn the basics of the copyright laws, if you want to be a writer... get them from the source: www.copyright.gov

and it's mentioned in the site info as well as made clear in many threads on this site [this one, too?], that one should only post brief excerpts and never post an entire piece of any work one hopes to have published some day...

 

Ask them to sign a release or a waver.

BTW a truly good writer knows that taking another's story is soul destroying. Because a great writer does not choose his or her story, the story chooses the writer

 

_____You want the benefits of improving your writing from reviews, but you don't wanna give up your ideas? I'll tell ya what, lady. There's a FIX for that. It won't be a boon at first, might take a year or two to help you out (if you're writing novels). But, it's definitely a booster in the long run. All you've gotta do is be willing to sacrifice a work or two.
_____What I used to do is, for about ten years, I DELIBERATELY wrote whole novels just for the sake of having the style, plot construction and the like being tested by the reading public. (These were fanfiction works anyway, so I couldn't legally make cash from 'em anyway.) People didn't like the first practice novel I wrote. Some dudes trashed it. But by about maybe the second or third practice novel, people were saying that I was pretty darned good. It was a matter of finding out what works and what doesn't. And to do that, I had to get my novels out there somewhere--that somewhere being the internet. (These are jokers who'd rather be playing the latest CALL OF DUTY or watching what passes for tevee these days on MTV, let alone reading.) I found a style that works, and it's been seen as being "good" for a while.
_____So, there ya go. Doing this lets you test out whole novels by making practice novels that aren't even made with YOUR ideas. Fanfiction is disposable 'cause you can't submit it to publishers anyway. By doing this, when you've got an awesome style, you can then apply THAT experience to your original masterpiece. The alternative is to be the offspring of a millionaire or already-established writer, write crap, and then have daddy's highly-paid professionals clean it up to make it readable! Give it a go. Get some exposure!

 

Copyright is extended automatically, at the moment of creation. The moment you write a short story, it is automatically, by law, copyrighted, and cannot legally by copied without compensation:

You can read the law in its entirety here. The section formally mandating the above (which is culled from the USCO's FAQ page) is Chpt 3, Sec 302(a).


Registering it with the government gives two key benefits:

1) It extends the copyright to your lifetime plus seventy years, meaning that your estate can benefit from your work after your death.
2) It serves as "best evidence" for priority in court, should priority be litigated.

The main requirement is that you give notice that you hold the copyright, by using the "©" with the year of creation or fixation, along with the phrase "All rights reserved", and the author's name.

Registration is not required in order to reserve rights; but it is a very powerful tool, and very affordable as well. I registered twelve of my songs, music and lyrics, on one recording, for $20. If you have a book representing six months of labor, the current fees ($35 for online, $65 for snail-mail registration) are a small charge for peace of mind, if the issue really bothers you. The form for copyright registration is here. You can copyright an entire collection of short stories under one title, for one fee.

But, to reiterate: registration is not required for copyright protection to be emplaced. It is emplaced at the moment of creation.

Registration merely creates a legal record of creation.

 

To some extent, I'm reminded of a certain episode of South Park. In said show, the point was made that everything that can be done has already been done. Theoretically, you can't steal someone's work, simply because theirs was "stollen" in a sense from everyone else to begin with. If I posted a few chapters of my work, then there's no way anyone could know where it's going. Even if I posted a whole book of my novel in progress, there's still no way they could do something similar and have it turn out the same...but I wouldn't take the risk anyway.

 

In the United States, registration is a prerequisite for filing an infringement lawsuit. However, you can register immediately before filing suit.

 

I was unaware of that. Thanks.