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The Vanished FanFic Archive

Requesting that content be removed...

When requesting that I remove a fic from my archive, please have the following ready:

  • Reasonable proof that you are the creator or current copyright holder of the work in question or an authorized representative.
  • A valid e-mail address to which I can reply.
  • An explanation as to why it was taken down and when you expect it to be back up. (Optional but I'd really appreciate it)

  • Also, please keep the following in mind before sending a request:

At least in the United States of America, the original purpose of copyright was to enrich the public domain. An author's right to control the distribution of their work exists only as an incentive for them to produce more and copyright was written into law in the days when the idea of completely and utterly deleting a work was so impossible as to be unimaginable. Copyright, at its core, is an artifact of a time when it was generally understood that, if you didn't want your work to live on, you kept it to yourself.

Attempting to completely remove information (whether or not it has made it onto the internet) tends to backfire (spectacularly), producing only ill will. In fact, it's a well-known fact among published authors that the easiest way to get a book a flood of readers is for someone to ban it. Human curiousity is drawn to the hidden and the forbidden. Please don't waste your time playing whack-a-mole with the world.

As for reputation and ill will, trying to erase the past is a very Orwellian thing to do and tends to make people think less of you. Generally speaking, it's respectable and a sign of emotional maturity to acknowledge your past failures or embarassments (we all have them) and show, by your actions, that thinking about them isn't worth the time and effort.

Finally, I am well within my rights to keep a copy of your fic for my own private use and, if necessary, I will put a clause in my will asking that your work be released to the public once the ridiculously-long copyright term has expired and we're both dead and gone... even if it really is horribly and nobody ever reads it. I want to uphold the spirit of copyright and, for me, it's the principle of the thing that matters.

Having read all that, you may continue to the contact form.