As most of you know, KC Grim had his story, Chasing The Shadows stolen. He is still dealing with that. Here's easy, relatively cheap way to help protect yourself and your story: Copyright your story before you post it. If you're writing and posting chapter by chapter, before you post the last chapter, file for a copyright. Get it done before it gets stolen.

You can do it here:

http://www.copyright.gov/eco/

The cost is $35.00 if you do it electronically. It's not a long difficult form and you need to include a copy of your manuscript. Copyrighting does not prevent theft, nor is it an automatic that you'll just show your copyright the issue ends and you win; the other person can always claim it was stolen by the person who holds the copyright. But it is a very useful tool because it shifts the burden to the other side to prove the person with the copyright is the theft and not the other way around.

Again it is always best to do this BEFORE you finish posting the story. That makes it near impossible for the thief to show it was posted somewhere prior to the the copyright application. The copyright plus digit proof should be sufficient to win the day.

Note this is NOT legal advice, I am not a copyright lawyer, this Andrew Q Gordon, the author who is not a lawyer suggesting to everyone else a way to help protect themselves.