It’s about your .sig, and the “Particle Man” quotation. Will you please credit They Might Be Giants? Politeness and copyright law dictate giving credit where it’s due, so unless you actually wrote that lyric, please let other people know who did. To do anything less borders on plagiarism and fraud.
Suo
(Who has reason to loathe plagiarism, or at least will when she’s published.)
Oh please. Plagerism is when someone claims to have written or produced the work of another. I made no such claim. I quote the “excerpt” from the work as a way of showing the inspiration for my screen name. If I am not mistaken, Fair Use allows exerpet materials for review and other such.
I have seen many other examples of copyrighted material being quoted from in sigs, both here and elsewhere. Anyone who has a quote from their favorite T.V. show, song, or book would be just as “guilty” as I. I fail to see where copyright infringment or even worse, fraud, could be claimed here. Who am I defrauding? Again, I make no claim to the authorship of those lyrics, and I gain nothing by their inclusion, other than the recognition from other TMBG fans that I am one of them.
I intentionaly left out credit because I know that ANY real TMBG fan would immediatly recognise the lyrics for what they were, and those who did not recognise them wouldn’t understand anyway.
So until I get a letter from the Johns demanding I cease and desist from using a snippet of one of their songs as my sig, it shall so remain.
I can see that naming the source can be a good thing in a published work like yours, Suo Na. But plagiarism and fraud, all because of a miniscule song quote in an Internet .sig line?
I don’t think so. While it may be possible that some people, unfamiliar with the band They Might Be Giants, are under the impression that particleman was the writer of these words, I hardly think that the band themselves are getting their lawyers in gear to sue the hell out of a message board poster who happens to be a fan.
Metallica tried, effectively, to sue their fans. Look where they ended up: Nothing Else Matters, with a symphonic orchestra. ::shudder::
I assume particlewill has answered your question about his willingness to give credit where credit’s due. Therefore, I’m closing this thread.