Heroes and strike suits

Datum for the part of the fan fiction argument that goes, "copyright owners have to oppose fan fiction or they'll end up getting sued when a fan story is like a later storyline": The section on NBC's website called "Share Your Heroes Theories: Tell Us What You Think Will Happen Next on 'Heroes.'"

As a practical matter at the very least, I think fan authors have no valid rights against the original copyright owners, even in the extremely unlikely event that the latter copied from the former. (Much more likely is that a fan story would extrapolate from elements in existing episodes/volumes in a logical way, and then the official version would do a similar thing, for similar reasons. That's just working from the same source. Fans joke about these situations as 'ripping off fanfic,' but we shouldn't -- the fannish hivemind extends beyond fandom.) I don't think ordinary disclaimers like "I don't own Superman" are all that useful or important for fan fiction, but maybe I should think more carefully about disclaimers that attempt to address the (overblown, but deeply felt) fears about being sued by a fan. The Heroes site, of course, only accepts submissions when the submitter agrees to a page of rules surrendering every possible right to NBC, and that's overdone and too legalistic for fandom, but maybe there's something short and sweet one could routinely say disclaiming any interference with the original copyright owner's rights to create new works.