| Sticks |
10-01-2011 05:59 PM |
Possible Copyright issue with my stories
Today while looking at one of my trailer videos I discovered that others may have used the term Mystical Realms.
After looking at Google I found this commercial website. Well I say commercial as people pay to use certain levels.
I also noted that my Mystical Realms stories also show up, so if they were googling as well I would show up.
There is a danger of precipitating action, but I have sent them this email
Quote:
Hello
I stumbled on your website by chance today, because of something I spotted on youtube and later on Google
After looking at your site I thought I ought to contact you, as on a completely different forum I published a number of stories using the name "Mystical Realms", which I came up with independently, and was worried that if you had come across my stories, you might thing that I had deliberately infringed on the copyright of the name of your website.
First a bit of history,
Back in 2001 here in the UK, on the Channel 4 Reach forum, which no longer exists, I had problem with what they called then a flame attack. One of the main subjects we were talking about back then, pre 9/11 was the UK Big Brother second series and two contestants Helen and Paul who kind of got together and stayed together for five years before splitting up.
As I was saying, there was this flame attack at me personally, and so I kind of resorted to a sort of storyline on that forum, starting in the style of Sam Spade, and most of it was told in the format of newspaper clippings, from a press in an alternative universe where all sorts of fantasy creatures co-existed. During the storyline I referred to this world as The Mystical Realms (24/8/2001)
I took copies of what I was doing and placed them on one of my websites which can be found here http://www.stickings90.webspace.virg.../mythology.htm
In 2002 I did try and do a sequel, but it never quite worked out but what I did do I later called season two as it did make it to my website
I later joined a forum called www.thisisbigbrother.com which discussed mainly the UK Big Brother Reality TV series. One of the threads there was a sort of interactive fan fiction story, based on that UK Big Brother second series.
In 2007, on the forum I suggested to an admin on that forum that a new fan fiction section should be created which could also be for people writing stories. To my supprise it was accepted and this new section was created. As it was my suggestion I felt I ought to contribute to this new section so I remembered what I had done in 2001 and 2002 and thought I would to do a "several years on" story based on that fantasy world set up I created. As this was a big brother forum, that story, I called Season three had to use the hook of the 2007 UK Big Brother game show as background,
I have since done a number of "Mystical Realms" stories on that forum and I took the stories well away from the UK Big Brother game show, although in some of the later stories I did make allusions to the early origins in an obleaque manner. In these later stories I brought in a "what if Earth authorities got involved" as a conceptual plot device and brought in the scence of parallel universes and M-Theory.
The only places I have published on the internet where I have used the name "Mystical Realms" have been the forum, www.thisisbigbrother.com, two of my websites, where I was giving the history of my stories. Youtube, where I did trailers so I could embed them in the forum and on Facebook so I could hotlink to images I had gathered which i used to illustrate my stories on that forum.
I was not certain if you had come across the forum I post on, as it does show up on Google, but I wanted to assure you that came up with the name independently and it was not until today that I even discovered the existance of you website using the same name of the world in my stories. I had no desire or intention to infringe any copyright of your name, because as I have stated, it was not until today that I discovered the existance of your organisation. Currently I have no plans to commercially exploit the stories that I published. (There would have to be a number of script changes due to copyright issues with respect to the Big Brother game show and one of the seasons where I dabbled with cross-over fan fiction and another alternate world which was based on a National Geographic television show)
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So the question I am worried about now, is just by using the name Mystical Realms for my stories, was I in copyright violation, even though it was not until today I was aware of this commercial website.
:shocked:
Any IPR lawyers out there? :conf: |
