Posted by Dave Thewlis on February 01, 2000 at 21:02:02 from slip-32-102-11-32.mi.us.prserv.net:
There is no technical reason why we cannot set up a equivalent to the Literary
Pages on the AR web site for fan fiction (what an SF fan friend of mine calls
"fanatifiction", itself a pun on an early name for SF, "scientifiction"). If
there is sufficient interest in such a thing (and recent dialog on the Tarboard
certainly suggests there is) I don't see why we cannot move ahead, and I haven't
heard any thoroughly quenching suggestions.
Peter Hyland suggests that copyright would be a problem only if the author of such
a piece of fan fiction intended to "publish" a work, and he defines "publish" as
to distribute and sell. This does raise the question of whether posting to a public
website is "publishing" given that no intent of selling is involved. My impression is
that this is still a grey area, at least in the U.S. Comments, Peter? Or others?
It was also suggested that the "blanket permission" given to TARS with respect to using
AR material in TARS publications should cover this issue.