I'm sure everybody remembers the first time you ever saw any of your fic posted, whether you posted them yourself or were posted by another webmaster or webmistress. It's exciting to see your words emblazoned across the glowing screen for everyone to read and admire.

So why, then, did I feel only disgust and disappointment as I saw one of my fics displayed in that manner a few days ago? The HTML was fine, and there were no errors in my fic-- my e-mail address was correct, even. The fic was posted with nothing but utmost respect.

And then it dawned on me-- I had never even heard from this webmaster via any sort of communicational means. He had posted this fic without my permission, which set me to thinking about the rights of fan fic authors. First off is the most obvious but most important. Even though not all fan fic is brilliant, and not all of it even tasteful, what every single fan fic is-- without question-- is the property of its author.

Imagine, if you would, that you were creating a website, and on this website you posted the complete text of Les Miserables under your own name rather than Hugo's. Since Hugo is out of copyright, this would only be a massive and shocking breach of truth rather than a legal problem. You would probably have your site pulled at worst. At best you would get some very nasty e-mails and life would go on.

Now imagine that you are creating a website, and you post a generic fan fic by a generic author who is not you. You would think this would be less of a problem than if you posted Les Miserables and said you had written it, right? Wrong. That fic is the sole property of its author, and since they are not dead-- nor has the fic been around for a hundred-odd years-- copyright laws still stand. When you use someone else's fic on their site, you have just broken the law.

One of the biggest problems on the Internet nowadays is copyright infringement. While this seems to occur more among the artist set than the writers, the fan fiction community is seeming to be suffering a growing number of property thieves. What can we do to fight this? Well, besides the obvious-- demanding that the stolen fics be taken down-- we can watch out for each other's backs, so to speak. And most importantly, we can trust that there are still honest people out there who will ask before they use our fics and who will not steal. Because we know there are.

The phrase is carpe diem, not seize the fan fic.

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