ingrid

The true beginning of the end.

I've been in fandom (and fanfic) for a long time. Over a decade and I've pooh-pooh'd rumors of our demise as easily as I've pooh-pooh theories that Tesla rilly, rilly invented a perpetual motion machine.

I'm not laughing now.

I'll be short here. A published writer has just been discovered as plagiarizing an old fanfic. (See link above.)

Let's go through the series of likely events. That published writer and their publishing house will be assaulted by indignant fans everywhere as thieves and, in a perfect world, rightfully so. Unfortunately, the publishing house, already under assault, profit-wise, by free fiction on the internets will take their very well-paid lawyers and point it *right* at the fanfic community to protect what's left of their interests -- by any means necessary.

They will *not* slap their own contracted interests (ie. writers with agents) on the wrist for the theft -- because that will make them look dumb and bad -- but instead they will seek to eradicate the defenseless source of potential future problems -- otherwise known as US, those writers who are the providers of that free and legally gray source of potential plagiarism on the Internet.

Because there is no way they can do enough research in the world to make sure that their future novel writers *aren't* stealing from posted online material -- so that online material?

It's gonna have to go. Somewhere, anywhere, but nowhere they, the money-making publishers, can be legally liable for theft of it.

Therefore, they will make online material legally irrelevant, by any means necessary. Which means that publicly posted fanfic will fall under much more intense legal scrutiny than ever before. Which means ...

Folks, if there is ever a time to suck it up and speak of it no more -- as we always said we would if the producers of our favorite shows stole our fic and made it into an episode -- now's the time to do it.

Yes, it sucks that some pissant got the bright idea to steal a free online work and make a profit of it. But that's the way the world works, sry2say. We honestly have no rights once we've posted our stuff and that honor system we've always relied on to protect "our property" -- it doesn't work in the real world. In fact, the real world is going to step on us with boots of spikes and lawyers and fire and leather and ....

*holds head* This ... will not end well.