The Great Divide

After the episode was over, there was a blurb about an upcoming show.

            ANNOUNCER
        Wheat circles: natural phenomena or created 
        by aliens?

Darin and I fell over one another with how stupid that was. (How did Lifetime end up with the Best Damn Show On Television®?) I mean, talk about your false dichotomies. These are the two possibilities presented? Where's the "wacky Brits and Brit-wannabes having a spot o' fun" choice?

Sigh.

Darin and I are not all-seeing engines of Divine Intelligence, however. After Homicide we turned on Babylon 5, only to find Star Trek: Voyager. We were extremely perplexed for the rest of the hour, right up until Darin asked if I wanted to watch Law and Order.

Oh. It's Wednesday. Tee hee. Of course.

And now, a little about copyright.

There are three methods of defending intellectual property, depending on what sort of intellectual property it is:

• copyright: protects an original idea that is fixed in tangible form (such as written down).
• patent: protects an original invention.
• trademark: protects a slogan.

The one writers care about is copyright. Copyright is our only means of protecting what we've written. Anyone can take something someone else wrote and say that it's theirs; there has to be some mechanism to punish others legally for this.

Now, most of the time it isn't worth writers' time (or their meager resources) to litigate, and that's why others can get away with copyright infringement as often as they do.

What about fair use? I hear you ask. Fair use is the allowable violation of copyright. You are allowed to quote other people's work sometimes. You're just not allowed to quote the whole thing (remember how professors aren't allowed to photocopy everything in sight for that class?) and you have to be using it for something...oh heck, here's the definition:

{107. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair Use

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair
use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in 
copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that 
section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, 
teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, 
or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining 
whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use 
the factors to be considered shall include -

    1.the purpose and character of the use, including whether 
such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational 
purposes; 
    2.the nature of the copyrighted work; 
    3.the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation 
to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
    4.the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value 
of the copyrighted work.

The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding 
of  fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the 
above factors.

17 U.S.C. { 107 (1988 ed. and Supp. IV). 

Al Schroeder of Nova Notes is having some kind of problems with another person online who has published his mail without his permission.

No, I don't know who has been doing this.

What I do know is

1. it's bad netiquette to do this -- you don't publish someone else's mail;
2. it's illegal -- a violation of copyright law.

In case you don't believe me, do a search on the following keywords:

Salinger
Random House
biography
copyright

Or do a search on Salinger v. Random House, 1987. Go ahead. I dare you. It's bad form, people, to publish someone else's mail without their permission, and one day you're going to run across someone who has a lawyer.

Some copyright sites:

• The Copyright Website
• Fair Use Quiz
• The Fair Use Doctrine