This document describes the major policies which archivists of The Gossamer Project (a collection of electronic fan fiction archives hereafter referred to as "Gossamer") apply when performing the day-to-day business of running the archives. It is not intended to cover every conceivable situation. If you have a question related to our policies, please address it to help@gossamer.org.
Disclaimer
FOX Network owns The X-Files. No copyright infringement is intended and no money is being made from the use of these characters.
Copyright
Please respect the author's copyright by asking their permission before archiving any of their stories. Gossamer has an established policy of collecting stories from several mailing lists and the alt.tv.x-files.creative (ATXC) newsgroup. Unless the author specifies "DO NOT ARCHIVE" in the story itself, the story will be collected and archived at Gossamer. Many stories are submitted directly to Gossamer and are not intended to be archived elsewhere. We also honor removal and revision requests as long as they can be verified as coming from the author.
All non-story components of Gossamer archives belong exclusively to Gossamer. They are also protected by copyright law. Please do not duplicate any of our work without our prior written permission. We provide robots.txt files on all of our sites to prevent them from being automatically spidered by robots.
Mirroring
Duplication of any portion of Gossamer archives is not allowed. Use of software which automatically duplicates our sites (such as "offline browsing" and "mirror" programs) is expressly forbidden. However, we do permit users to save individual stories for their own personal use.
Linking
You may provide a link to the front page of any Gossamer web site from your own web site. We encourage you to link to (http://www.gossamer.org/) instead of the individual sites, though, in case one of the sites is down for any reason. We do not permit "deep linking," which is when you provide a link directly to one of the stories on our site. Such links remove the context around the story and replace it with your own. We expend a considerable amount of effort to index and display stories in a consistent, readable format. Linking directly to the stories makes them appear to be part of your site instead of ours and imposes a substantial drain on our resources to serve those stories. Although a small number of archives have permission to link directly to stories on Gossamer, we do not intend to establish any new linking relationships.
Most of the other pages on the web sites are automatically generated. As a result, their names may change from time to time, and linking to them may result in broken links. Please do not link to these pages either.
Plagiarism
Plagiarism is the act of incorporating a substantial amount of an existing work into a work of your own without proper attribution. Gossamer does not condone plagiarism. If a case of plagiarism is brought to our attention, we will first review the works in question to determine whether the claim is valid. Then, at Gossamer's sole discretion, we will take whatever action we deem necessary and appropriate given the circumstances. Normally these actions involve contacting the accused plagiarist and removing the offending story from the archives.
Archiving
Gossamer places no value judgments whatsoever on the stories which have been submitted. In fact, we do not normally read submissions. The service which Gossamer provides is simply a public archive. Gossamer is, in many ways, a library for fan fiction. All types of stories are accepted with only the following technical restrictions:
- The story must be fictional - The story must be about fictional characters, not real people - The story must in some way relate to the television show The X-Files or one of its characters - The story must not criticize other stories (e.g., MSTings of fanfic) - The story must not plagiarize any other source We do NOT limit submissions based on moral judgments about their content. Authors are asked to rate their stories using a modified version of the Motion Picture Association of America's (MPAA) rating system:
G The story is suitable for young children to read. PG The story may contain some curse words, violence, and/or sexual hints, but nothing graphic. R The story may contain a significant amount of profanity, graphic sex, graphic gore, and/or explicit violence. It considers topics and/or has descriptions that may not be suitable for younger readers. NC-17 The story contains EXTREMELY graphic violence, gore, and/or sex. It considers topics and has descriptions that may even be disturbing for adults. The author may also choose to provide no rating or explicitly mark the story "Not Rated." Gossamer does not audit the ratings which authors have chosen, nor does Gossamer modify the ratings of stories without the author's consent. Readers are warned that because this information is considered the author's responsibility, it may be incomplete or inaccurate.
Gossamer has had several different archivists over the years, and the methods we employ to avoid improperly archiving stories are not exact. Thus, there may be stories on the archives which do not belong. We also route stories to the appropriate Gossamer archives based on the classification information provided by the author. The decision as to where a story should be archived or whether it should be archived at all belongs solely to Gossamer.
Violations
Violation of these policies may result in loss of access to Gossamer sites, removal of any archived stories, or even legal action. We ask that all of the users of our sites be respectful of the volunteers, authors, and readers who comprise this community. Without the support of the community, Gossamer would cease to exist.