Downloading stories

This is fiction, not reality. Personally, I often download stories & rewrite them to suit my personal tastes. Changing words, implements, number of strokes, sometimes a lot of stuff.

I didn't think it was possible to download stories from the LSF.

This has been discussed before but for the record several of our authors submit stories to us ONLY on the basis that we do whatever we can to stop people downloading them. In the past one or two have boasted about downloading, author's stories have appeared uncredited on other public sites and the author has subsequently requested we remove their submissions. Since that time we have banned and will continue to ban users who continue to download, irrespective of who they are. Of course, there's nothing to stop readers contacting an author to request copies of their work.

Strictly speaking you ought to have the author's permission to do that, but if it is only for personal use no sane author would care, and it might well be covered by fair use (in the US at least) anyway. If you were to repost the modified versions, then you really ought to get permission, in my view.