(no subject)
You may have already heard that someone is selling other people's fanfic. If not, you might want to go make sure yours isn't there, especially if it's in the Star Wars, Star Trek:TNG, or X Files fandoms.
Obviously this is way rude, and is also an issue because of making money off the canonical creator's copyright. But can anyone tell me what the legality is of selling someone else's original work that was originally posted on the Internet for free? I ask because the nonfiction section is full of stuff I remember from my days on alt.sex.bondage, the actual newsgroup FAQs but also essays, a parody story, etc. And I suspect most of the rest of the fiction is taken from the Usenet stories groups as well.
I could probably get in touch with some of the authors I recognize to let them know what's going on, but before I do I wanted to check whether they have any rights to say you can't do this, or whether they've put the work in the public domain by posting it without any kind of "all rights reserved" notice.
Edited to Add Question answered, thanks! And people whose stories or articles I noticed emailed. But there's a lot there, and I don't know everyone's old nicks, so if you posted anything to the alt.sex Usenet groups in the mid to late 90s, you might wanna go see. He's even selling something of mine, although who the hell would buy the 10 year old mission statement of a college BDSM group I can't imagine.
And edited once again to give belated credit where it is due to elynross for the heads up.
Obviously this is way rude, and is also an issue because of making money off the canonical creator's copyright. But can anyone tell me what the legality is of selling someone else's original work that was originally posted on the Internet for free? I ask because the nonfiction section is full of stuff I remember from my days on alt.sex.bondage, the actual newsgroup FAQs but also essays, a parody story, etc. And I suspect most of the rest of the fiction is taken from the Usenet stories groups as well.
I could probably get in touch with some of the authors I recognize to let them know what's going on, but before I do I wanted to check whether they have any rights to say you can't do this, or whether they've put the work in the public domain by posting it without any kind of "all rights reserved" notice.
Edited to Add Question answered, thanks! And people whose stories or articles I noticed emailed. But there's a lot there, and I don't know everyone's old nicks, so if you posted anything to the alt.sex Usenet groups in the mid to late 90s, you might wanna go see. He's even selling something of mine, although who the hell would buy the 10 year old mission statement of a college BDSM group I can't imagine.
And edited once again to give belated credit where it is due to elynross for the heads up.