Funny, today I read a message of someone apologizing for having used the beginning of a story written by someone else to develop its own fanfic. However, that person took the special care of posting a disclaimer before she started to reproduce her own story. So, IMHO, she acted correctly. Others have different opinions though, which I respect.

Really, I didn´t know there where rules, apart from literally stealing other people´s work and pretending it is not.

So, I would like someone to reproduce here those rules, because I think a discussion of the topic is a profitable one.

Sorry, if there are written rules somewhere, don´t expect me to search for them, because unfortunately my time is very limited. It is not easy to update this site regularly, to write my own stories, to attend to my other professional chores, and to take care of a family totally dependent on me. So, you see it is not a question of lack of interest, but one arising from my own personal limitations.

This is the disclaimer which I find quite fair:

Hi. I hope it's okay to post this story here. I have to give credit to Meilin's story, "First Meeting", posted at ranma's archive, as being the inspiration for this story. Ever since I read her story a while back I've been fascinated with the premise she set and finally decided to try my hand at writing a story building upon the idea she had. I hope that doesn't break any rules with writing fanfiction. I'd hate to be accused of stealing someone else's idea so I wanted to state this clearly in the beginning where the inspiration for this story started from. If you haven't read Meilin's stories I'd recommend doing so. I love all of her stories but this was the one that I couldn't get out of my head. There is one small deviation from the premise set in "First Meeting", and that is that in this story Nikita is not Operations daughter. There may be other little changes later as the story develops further, I'm not to sure right now. I hope you enjoy. Sorry in advance if this posting doesn't turn out right. Shanna/Bluemystril

Hi Lorena!

I feel that Shanna handled this matter correctly. I was very sorry to read her posts later on in which she was upset because she was apparently being compared to a well known plagiarist.

So many LFN fanfics bear some similarities to each other which is totally understandable. Most of them are...after all...based on Michael and Nikita. Many fans visualize a story about the future for Michael and Nikita which is similar to what many other fans visualize for this fictional couple! Many of us can easily picture them meeting together and even having a child together.

I think the upset being felt by those whose fanfic was taken by the plagiarist we know has caused some to jump to hasty and unkind conclusions about someone like Shanna. This is very regrettable. I am sorry that Shanna was hurt.

If there is a set of rules out there about fanfic, then they were simply made up by a fanfic writer. There is no 'law' about fanfics that I know of. The LFN fanfics are being based on characters that were originally presented to the public in the Luc Besson film. His film then inspired the TV series 'La Femme Nikita'. The fans who write stories based on Michael and Nikita do not own the rights to these characters and I feel they can themselves be accused of a bit of plagiarizing if we get really serious about this matter.