Copyright & Vocabula

[RonButters at AOL.COM]

Mr. Fishe's use of the verb "flout" is more than a little misleading here--in 
a way that goes beyond the issue of fair use that Fred Shapiro raised: Dr. 
Flanigan, had she done what Mr. Fishe suggests, would have incurred no criminal 
liability. All that the "copyright laws" say is that he has the right to sue 
her if he feels that he has proof that she has violated his property rights 
under the law with respect to Dr. Trudgill's article. I'm not a lawyer, but I can 
give an educated guess that, since Dr. Trudgill has offered to distribute the 
article free of charge, it is hard to imagine that a court would find that 
Vocabula's financial loss would be more than the traditional $1. Some "flout"!

As for the intellectual worth of a journal that publishes both Halpern's 
rants and Trudgill's patient and temperate, response (an issue related to Dennis 
Preston's call for limiting ADS-L to ADS members), Vocabula seems to be 
precisely analogous to a zoological publication run by liberal creationists that 
occasionally publishes an article advocating evolution. Sociolinguists should be 
interested in Vocabula to the extent that it is in itself data testifying to 
the strength (and direction) of naive folk beliefs about language. 



In a message dated 6/17/03 7:29:21 AM, Vocabula at AOL.COM writes:


> The copyright to your piece in Vocabula is indeed yours, and you do have 
> the
> right to send the article to others. But no one has the right to copy the
> piece from my site and email it to others without my permission. I trust you
> agree.
>  
> Ms Flanigan is apparently in the habit of flouting copyright laws:
> 
> "So, if a subscriber to a journal makes a copy and sends it on to someone
> else (let's say, by snail mail), that's a copyright infringement?  How about 
> the
> millions of people who copy articles from libraries??  I guess I'll have to
> tell my students to stop xeroxing from journals!" 
> 
> I'm not sure that she should be encouraged.
> 
> 
> 
> Robert Hartwell Fiske
> Editor and Publisher
> The Vocabula Review
> www.vocabula.com
> ______________________
> 
> The Vocabula Review
> A measly $8.95 a year
> www.vocabula.com
> ______________________
> 
> The Vocabula Review
> 10 Grant Place
> Lexington, MA 02420
> United States
> Tel: (781) 861-1515
> 
>