Good for you! We need someone to stand up/drink/fall-down/stand-up/drink… for our rights.

I have an idea for a line of condoms with the end snipped off. These would be handmade from sheep intestines by Amish women in a small town in Pennsylvania. I would sell these as “Condoms for Children — a Product of Intercourse” (PA). What federal agency would mind that?

First, your point about giving credit: I gave the Mount Shasta Herald credit in the post (they are the copyright holders, not you), the same way the LA Times would give the New York Times credit for excerpting short passages of a published editorial work.

I also linked to the original story, and excerpted a limited amount of the work (a couple paragraphs) — all of which fall under generally accepted fair use rules — which the journalism world has operated under for years.

Astonishingly, you suggest I post the entire story – a clear copyright violation. You also manage to intermingle the idea of “freedom of the press on the ‘net” — a legal concept which has little relation to a fair use/copyright discussion.

What’s true here is that you don’t seem to know much of anything about fair use, intellectual property, generally accepted journalism practices, etc. Apologize for correctly practicing my own first amendment, legally accepted fair use rights? Like hell.

As for excerpting segments of future stories, you can be sure I’ll follow the same legal, industry-accepted guidelines I already am, though it’s likely I’ll try to avoid work featuring errors (it’s “bandwagon” not “band wagon”).

As a former newspaperman, I suggest you go back to school. Then we’ll talk.

From Nolo Press on Fair Use:

Under the “fair use” rule of copyright law, an author may make limited use of another author’s work without asking permission. Fair use is based on the belief that the public is entitled to freely use portions of copyrighted materials for purposes of commentary and criticism. The fair use privilege is perhaps the most significant limitation on a copyright owner’s exclusive rights. If you write or publish, you need a basic understanding of what is and is not fair use.

Don’t apologize, just do better next time.

Enough banter for now. I will have another article out in a couple days. I think you’ll know what to do.

(Whew…I think I’m out.)

BTW – I assume your Ben Franklin reference was to his purported quote of, “Beer is proof God loves us and wants us to be happy.”

Gosh, it is possible that – in addition to being incredibly tight-assed – that the feds in this case are also willing to pick on smaller bottlers while ignoring the sins of the bigger?

Naww…

“…we thought of wine as something as healthy and normal as food and also a great giver of happiness and well being and delight. Drinking wine was not a snobbism nor a sign of sophistication nor a cult; it was as natural as eating and to me as necessary.”

The label was submitted to the Feds for approval and they responded with “you may not reference wine as something healthy and normal and a giver of happiness, well being and delight”. I guess Ernest was way off base and we should have just used an image of a silicone enhanced co-ed sporting a bikini. Beer commercials have proven that the Feds don’t mind using T&A as a marketing tool for alcohol.