I'm in the middle of something at the moment, actually. I have to wrap up my submission to Philippine Genre Stories' publication tonight; While their deadline's still coming up this Friday, I'm probably going to be busy for the rest of the week.
What that means is that I also don't have enough time to write up a proper post for November's disclaimer-of-the-month. I suppose that my previous succession of monthly disclaimers should head off everything, as should the Note of Ownership I have on the lower right-hand area of this blog. In the event that anyone's actually expecting a formal statement from me on the matter, though, I can say that all copyright regulations can be summed up into one single sentence: Don't touch my stuff.
As selfish as that sounds, it's... er... well... okay, it's selfish. It doesn't mean, of course, that the writer wants his work all to himself; It means that the writer doesn't want to wake up one morning and find that some lazy sot has decided to appropriate such work under a different name. Even casual use raises some similar issues, most notably the problem of being quoted out of context. No writer wants to post his thoughts about one thing and have them cut-and-pasted into something that points in a totally different direction.
In a sense, copyright is all about control. And the last thing that any writer wants to see is a loss of control, much less a lack of one. Is there any wonder why we come down hard on any people who are unwise enough to trespass on our works?
There's probably a good-sized debate on the matter out there, but I'll leave that for the critics to decide. Or I'll deal with it sometime in the upcoming posts.
In the meantime, however... see you next month. I've got a story to finish.
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