BABY BOOM WRITERS

Copyright laws are extremely complex, but let's look at Eons Terms of Use:
view link

"Eons is the owner of this website as a whole and of any individual content on the website that is provided by Eons staff members or contributors who provide work under contract with Eons. All Eons content is protected under the copyright and intellectual property laws of the United States and other countries. The Eons website also includes works that are the property of others, such as individual contributors or experts; these works, too, are protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws. You may display and, unless otherwise noted, download and print out portions of Eons content solely for your own personal, non-commercial use. Any redistribution, retransmission or publication of any copyrighted material is strictly prohibited without the express written consent of the copyright owner. You agree not to change or delete any proprietary notices from materials downloaded from Eons."

To sum this up: Eons owns the copyright of material produced by staff members and contracted contributors. If you, as a user of Eons, upload material to Eons, you own the copyright. Eons does not.

Keep in mind that when you post your material anywhere on the Web and it has not appeared elsewhere in publication, you MAY be actually "publishing" your work, thus killing the opportunity to sell "first rights." Also, many people infringe on other's copyright, either deliberately or because of ignorance. If you have concerns about infringement, DO NOT POST material that has value to you as a writer. Be especially careful about websites that may acquire your copyright through their own terms of use (unlike Eons) if you upload to those sites.

If you have any more questions on copyright, please let me know. I am not an attorney and cannot offer legal advice, but I have studied intellectual property in law school and can provide basic information.

Here's my experience with developing a novel concerning copyright laws.

My Doctor read a very early draft of Tenacious Love. He thought it was good enough that he suggested I get it copyrighted to protect it.

First, what I found out talking to an attorney was that you can only get finsihed material copyrighted.

Second, in order to protect material that is being developed, you need to have a copy of a raw draft with an attorney. This protects the creative idea which you are developing.

By having it with an attorney you are permitted to add the words, copyright pending to every page of the material you are writing. This establishes the fact that you intend to have your story copyrighted upon completion.

I have done this with Tenacious Love. I believe it is protected whether I give it to a test reader or post it here. MY attorney assures me it is protected. He also warns me that there is no way possible from preventing anyone from stealing it unless I show it to no one before it gets published.

Every once in a while, I send an updated version to the attorney to file. This shows that I am the creator of the story. I don't have to pay for this until I get him to do the copyright.

I don't know if this helps answer the questions. Seek legal advice if you are concern with copyrighting your material before you post anything here or else where.

I look at things differently. If someone steals my story, there's going to be one hell of a legal battle that I will win. Think of all the free publicity your story will get. LOL Also, I think wow, what a compilment to my skills as a writer, that someone would steal my stuff.

DKG

My understanding of rights and the web is that if you post written material to a website that is accessible to the public (does not require a password to view it), then you have "given away" first electronic rights to that work to the website. You cannot legally sell first rights or electronic rights of that work to anyone else without divulging where the work first appeared online, so the potential buyer can assess how many people they thought had access to the work while it was posted on the website and if it's worth paying money to you, the author, to republish the work in another form.

This is why I never publish poems, short stories, or novel chapters online without first getting compensation elsewhere for those first rights. You'll find many of my short stories in ezines, but either I was paid for them or if I was not, I sold the story to some other publication first and the ezine has reprint rights. After you have a publishing contract for a novel, most publishers will allow you to post short excerpts on your personal author website (but usually not elsewhere), and those conditions will be stipulated in the contract.

Since a userid and password is required to access Eons, you may be okay to post written material to an Eon group, but I'd suggest consulting with someone who is familiar with literary copyrights first to make sure.