An investigation of what happens when fans take material related to popular TV science fiction/fantasy programmes without permission, give the copyright holder full credit, and use it to promote the show from which they have taken the material. The web sites relating to two TV series were chosen for study: Forever Knight and the X‐Files. A large number of owners of relevant fan sites were surveyed by questionnaire. The investigation showed that the approaches taken by the copyright holders in the two case studies differed quite markedly. Fox (X files) takes a harder line than Sony (Forever Knight) appear to have done. The issue of rights ownership is becoming increasingly important, especially with the advent of the Internet. Though considered by many to be something of a trivial area, fan activities have in fact been at the forefront of the copyright conflict taking place on the Web.