Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Disclaimer: October 2006

That was close, I think. With all that I'm doing at the moment, I almost forgot to put up a disclaimer post for this month. To compound the issue, many of the things I'm working on right now involve business plans, case studies, or publication summaries -- all of them technical documents in their own right. I suppose that, if there's something that I don't feel like writing in my independent time at the moment, it's more of that kind of stuff.

So you'll have to bear with me this month, as I won't be getting my usual kicks out of creative threats today. I figure that a simple summary of the facts will do:

1. I write up a disclaimer post around the first of each month. This is done to ensure that there is at least one such entry visible on the main weblog site as often as possible. There's a better, more permanent Note of Ownership on the right-hand sidebar, but I believe that most people just glaze over it despite my attempts to make it interesting reading.

2. Everything written out on this blog is completely original, except where noted. I therefore technically own the copyrights on all this stuff, and it's mostly pretty sorry stuff to boot. That also means, however, that I also own whatever diamonds you might find in this sheer amount of roughness.

3. In my writing, I occasionally reference creative works by other authors. These references are always given the proper acknowledgements in this blog, wherever they may appear. In the event that I do not provide the correct attributions for anything, anyone is free to contact me regarding the error, force me to change the offending entry, and otherwise kick me in the rear.

4. In much the same vein, anyone is free to use any excerpt from this blog's content as long as the correct references are placed. I would also ask that these people contact me as well, as I'm invariably curious as to who's crazy enough to use my writings. (This also allows me to enforce such things as proper usage or context.)

5. I promise to come down hard on people who take my writings and then either publish or promote them under different names. I feel that this is theft, plain and simple. Apart from the fact that people seek to profit on another man's efforts without just compensation, there's also the fact that this circumvents the entire self-improvement process: People will never learn how to express themselves well if they keep riding on other peoples' work.

6. I feel that out-of-context usage and contextual miscommunication are just as bad in this regard: I do not wish to mislead anyone, much less have excerpts of my work advocate stances that are beyond my knowledge. In light of this, I must therefore reserve the right to enforce the sanctity of my work as I see fit.

7. I'll have to admit that no one's stolen any of my work yet. That could be attributed to any of two reasons: a) The fact that these disclaimers have actually been more successful than I imagined, or b) I'm just deluding myself over the so-called "quality" of these posts. Whatever the case, at least I haven't been a victim of plagiarism yet.

8. Finally, I constantly make threats in order to provide a mocking example of what I plan to do to eventual offenders. Normally I just name up to three random objects and let the readers' minds segue them together into a creative scenario that only they could possibly dream up. For this month, they happen to be: Chicken Feathers, Cactus Plants, and Vaseline.

Have a nice day, everyone.

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