Plans for jokes web pages abandoned
I have abandoned previously-announced plans to have joke pages on my web
site, and have removed all anticipatory links from my web site. While a couple
of the sources I had planned to use kindly gave me permission to use their
material, the source who controlled two of the books I'd planned to use (one of
them perhaps the most important single book I'd hoped to use) refused
permission. I have come to think that tracking down copyright owners, and
having to accommodate refusals, have made this project more trouble than it's
worth, so it's not going ahead at all for the forseeable future.
The same applied to the miscellaneous anecdotes I had planned to use from
many different sources. These were just little stories, some true, some perhaps
not true, which were not jokes as such, but just little items of human interest
value. Once again, one of my main proposed sources turned down my request.
What makes this especially regrettable is that the sources that refused
permission control material that has not got the slightest chance of ever seeing
print again, so I don't see how my use of the material is going to cause lost
sales or in any other way affect anyone's income. But I have my limits to how
much effort I'm willing to make to track down copyright owners, write, wait for
a response, and so on, only to be turned down.
If you reached this page, it is probably because you bookmarked it earlier,
or else you are arriving here via a cached copy of another page of my site on a
search engine.
Sorry to have to give you nothing after all, if you came here looking for
material I earlier promised; I obviously overestimated the generosity of some
copyright holders in allowing use of out-of-print material. My thanks to those
who did give me permission, even if it's in vain in the end.
The pity of it is that almost all of this material is probably long out of
print and completely unobtainable, and most unlikely ever to see print again, so
that my use of the material would not deny any parties money they might
rightfully earn from the use of the material, and would at least make it
available to more people. Given the great potential of the World Wide Web to
make material easily available, it is to be hoped that one day copyright laws
can be modified so that it is easier to make available material which would
otherwise remain unavailable, but which is not earning its owner money anyway
under the current system.
If you wish to look at other parts of my web site, please continue from the
site map.
Michael Edwards.