Concerning Intellectual property

[Nikita]

Thanks to thrall for bringing this to my attention and asking what I thought about it.

Several of us have been here over five years, Mad Lews, Chuck, Ruby, Me, Pejanon, Alex (I think) to name a few. I'm not saying anything they don't know and am fairly certain someone will correct me if I'm unclear or wrong.

Just a few things I know about the topic:

1) Whatever you write is yours. Once it appears anywhere, in print or on the net, it is still your copyrighted work. The author retains all rights to his work. The work will still be attributed to you whether your name is on the piece or not.

For more information, you can download a pdf file on What is Intellectual Property?

2) Sites can refuse to remove your writing(s), whatever you've submitted or posted, but they don't own your work. It is not their property unless the writer has been paid and agreed to the terms. They can refuse to delete or allow YOU to delete your material from the site. Therein lies the pickle. Imo, that is an unfortunate stance, one that they can easily rectify.

Literotica, along with many, many sites on the net, will remove your story on request. It's a courtesy and wise decision. They are more likely to submit stories again knowing that they can be removed when they desire. Writers need to have this option because it governs whether their work will be accepted or not by some publishing houses.

That's not to say, that stories on the library, have been refused because they are still posted. On the contrary. It depends on whom you send your entry. The topic of publication is a whole nother hairy ball of wax more appropriately discussed in another thread.

3) When the site was bought, writers who wanted their stories removed were denied that courtesy. To my recollection, there was no mention of this new policy in the TOS when the announcement was made. In fact, the threads regarding that issue should be archived somewhere on this forum unless they've been deleted.

Other sites, like Myspace, have attorneys review their TOS periodically. Thus, blogs, comments, etc, can be edited, removed, etc., by the poster, profile owner, and/or the site.

One site responded to a concern voiced by a member that her (and others') blogs were/are captured by RSS feeds. The site owner provided a feature that would give bloggers control on whether or not they want their words to be excluded from the RSS feeds.

What is RSS? (Rich Site Summary) is a format for delivering regularly changing web content. Many news-related sites, weblogs and other online publishers syndicate their content as an RSS Feed to whoever wants it.

4) Something y'all may not realize is that once you make a post in a public forum, ANY public forum, it can be quoted elsewhere without your knowledge or consent. For all intents and purposes, as soon as you hit ENTER, your words are circling the world-wide web. This is a public forum.

thrall: do photos posted become site property as well....as they are part of a post??

5) Not sure about the photos. Again, if your contribution is part of a post, it's open season anyway.