Forum: Lost Stories

Not on SOL ?

He's the reason for the anti switch and bait rules as he was posting partial stories and telling people to go to his website to pay a membership to get the rest of it. His books are now available via Amazon and his own website.

The full details were posted on the old Forum that was hosted on another site and it no longer exists. I remember the essence of the reasons but not the fine details.

I looked there but searches on Winston or on teaser did not throw up anything definitive.

It came up a few times due to people searching for his stories by name and the story as to why they left SoL were detailed. Also, the author's spouse weighed in on the discussion as did many others, including Lazeez who gave the details of the problems he had with the Sir Winston.

At the time another author who worked with him asked me to delete his stories in protest.

I know it was many years ago, but wasn't the other author who spat the dummy and walked out in protest his wife?

Questions like: How long is copyright good for? or, more likely, How the hell do I keep from being exposed as a huge fraud?

Complex question, really.

Copyright now lasts for the life of the author, plus 70 years.

Also, you can not "Copyright" a name. That is, an actual birth name. However, when it comes to a pen name, it gets more complex. If it is say "Dracula", then there is no copyright. 2 or 5 or 20 authors can all use it, and nobody can really argue about it.

Same if you pick a "common name", like Jim Smith or Mike Hunt. Somebody could claim "Copyright Infringement" in that you are trying to confuse readers if you both write similar types of work. But that can get tricky as they have to prove you are intending to sell your stories to people confusing you with another author. And if one writes romance and the other sports stories, then it would likely fail as they are very different works.

If you are writing under a name preserved by copyright (Darth Maul, Harry Potter, Harry Callahan, Franklin W. Dixon, etc) then unless that is the name on your birth certificate they can go after you for using a trademarked name fictitiously. And once again, in that your doing so violates the example I gave above.

But if your actual birth name is "Stephen King", go ahead. He can't sue you, although you may have a hard time getting into print unless you change your name a bit. Because publishers may be afraid of the hassle and cost of deep pockets.

Such is not unusual at all, and for example the Screen Actors Guild actually has rules in place to keep that from happening. I think that if a person has a name enrolled, they have exclusive use for something like their life plus 50 years.

That is why we have Michael Keaton, Michael Douglas, and Mike Douglas. All three were born Michael Douglas, but each took a different name for professional reasons. I knew a guy in SAG who went by "Bill Collins", because his birth first name was Phil. And Phil Collins was already a member of SAG for his movie work.

He then later changed it to something unrelated, as when the Screen Extra's Guild collapsed and the members brought into SAG, there were suddenly around 15 "Bill Collins" grandfathered in. Unlike SAG, SEG never required an individual be the only one to use a name.