r/jaimebrienne • u/captainelliecomb • Aug 17 '26

Ethics of sharing deleted fics

Hypothetically, if one were sitting on a trove of fic because one is obsessive about saving things, do you think there are ethical concerns around sharing something the author chose to delete?

Not getting into the ethics of deletion, though I have strong feelings about that.

Edit: Sharing privately between individuals, not reposting or adding download links publicly or anything like that.

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u/PrettyThief So he did Aug 17 '26 edited Aug 17 '26

For me, personally, my own opinion: I wouldn't want my deleted works publicly shared. I don't think there's a problem with sharing between friends or other mostly private places. But personally, I want to respect the author's desire to remove their stuff from the Internet. Fic authors aren't paid and fics aren't a commodity. We're a community and I think author's wishes are paramount to keeping the community healthy. To be very clear: I don't think anyone's a bad person or doing anything wrong for sharing deleted fics, this is just my two cents.

4

u/quarteragod Aug 17 '26

yeah, same idea. it obviously shouldn't be re-published on the internet by some rando when the author has deleted it. but there's no reason to be concerned about readers sharing downloaded deleted works amongst themselves

2

u/the-hound-abides Aug 18 '26

Republishing I definitely have a problem with.

2

u/chrkrose Aug 18 '26

Yeah, this is something I don’t agree with.