Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Notice to People Who Make Statements

If you make a public statement, it is possible that someone who likes commenting on those statements will provide a "line-by-line" response to your comments. That's something that usually is going to be considered a "fair use" or "fair dealing" (depending where you are from) of your original statement.

If this topic interests you, you may want to check out the following links:

http://archive.salon.com/21st/rose/1998/10/09straight.html

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml

http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/ahrc/script-ed/vol4-1/dezwart.asp

This blog quite often includes "line-by-line" responses (often - in fact usually - critical) as part of the journalistic/religious/scholarly work of the blog. Anyone outraged over receiving a "line-by-line" critique of their work can feel free to mention that to the blog author, but unless there is some reason why the critique is not a fair use, then the critique is likely going to stay.

That said, if somehow it should happen that the line-by-line critique would somehow be unfair, such as:

1) diverting a royalty stream,
2) republishing libel,
3) intentionally provoking a reasonable person to physical violence, or
4) the like,

then the blog owner will normally remove the material, unless there is some compelling journalistic/religious/scholarly reason for the material to stay despite the argument for being "unfair."

Incidentally, harassing emails/comments that say something like "stop critiquing my work" or "stop critiquing the whole of my work" or the like will be subject to the appropriate activity of either hitting the reject/delete button to conceal the harasser's act, or hitting the publish/forward button to have some fun at the harasser's expense, as may seem appropriate.

-Turretinfan

P.S. This brief discussion on "fair use" seems helpful as well (link), though ironically the discussion appears to be pirated from another site.

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