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From: brent@ucsbcsl.UUCP ( )
Newsgroups: net.jokes.d
Subject: Copyrights -- Dave Barry
Message-ID: <301@ucsbcsl.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 13-May-85 23:07:40 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucsbcsl.301
Posted: Mon May 13 23:07:40 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 17-May-85 00:38:14 EDT
Organization: U.C. Santa Barbara
Lines: 44

Well, as you may remember, I SINNED by posting a few
Dave Barry columns -- but while I was doing it I sent him
a note telling him I was doing it -- I just got the
following reply today... it is interesting to get the
horse's opinion straight from the horse's mouth. 
Or something. 

----------------------------------------------------------------

May 3, 1985

Dear Brent,

Well, shit, this is SUCH a sticky issue. See, they pay me
to write this column, and they feel that therefore they own it,
and they have many vicious lawyers who agree with them. Me,
I figure, once I write it, I'd like people to read it, so
I don't care a great deal how it gets disseminated, if that
is in fact how you spell it. But then when I write something
NOT for the Miami Herald, something where the rights belong
to ME, I get, as you can well imagine, mightly irate when I see
that some glottal stop publisher of some 
pissant little newspaper simply reprints it and
doesn't even ask my permission, let alone pay me. This happens
all the time, and it makes me wish I had more close friends named
Vinnie and Vito who owed me favors.

This is not, of course, what you are doing. You are just being
a deranged college student sharing yuks electronically, which doesn't
bother me. You can go right ahead, as far as I'm concerned. I just want you
to know that (1) I have no legal right to grant you permission to
do it -- only the Miami Herald does, and they won't; and (2) there
is a reason people get upset about seeing copyright laws violated,
because often (thogh not in your case), it
amounts to theft of a writer's work, which is his property.

So have a nice day.

                                     Regards,

                                     Dave Barry

p.s. I have never benn able to get my ****ing modem to work.
What does that mean?