NEW To Sysops From jms

 Posted on 3/2/1997 by J. Michael Straczynski <71016.1644@compuserve.com> to CIS


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As it happens, I have an answer to this. First, it's Warner
Bros. that would be at issue here, since they own the copyright to B5.
That issue aside for the moment...

This actually came up not long ago, when a person doing synopses
of the episodes didn't just synopsize it...it included every line of
dialogue in the episode, and extensive narrative descriptions. WB saw
that and said, "Tell 'em to stop it." Which they did.

On several occasions, whole pages at a time have been excerpted
for articles, or reprinted...a heck of a lot more than what was posted
here...and neither WB nor I have a problem with that. As it is, many
of the current synopses contain *massive* verbatim quotes of dialogue,
just not as much as the one main offender. Nobody blinks an eye.

I'm not saying this across the board, but you asked what would
apply in my situation, and that's it. (Which, btw, is a kind of
evasion...rather than dealing with the problem That Is, people create
what they hope are similar situations and say, "Well, what would you do
if THIS happened?" Well, this HASN'T happened, and it isn't a direct
corrolary to this current situation in ANY event. Its' just a way of
skidding the discussion off in another direction and muddying the
waters.)

jms