My Conversation with the Attorney

Earlier tonight, I spoke with Steve Shine, who said he is acting as the Frasers' attorney in this matter. (Indeed, a source said Shine was with Fraser today when they met with NACS representatives to discuss an agreement in advance of tomorrow's closed door school board meeting.)

Shine politely asked that I stop posting pages from Carroll (the Book) and take down those that I had already posted. He intimated that putting the book online might jeopardize the agreement being negotiated between Fraser and the NACS, which led me to believe that part of that agreement may involve some sort of gag order whereby Fraser agrees not to talk about the book or distribute it. Why he would agree to that is beyond me. But perhaps he's under the mistaken impression that agreeing to a gag order is a good idea.

Shine said that there was a copyright on the book and that if I did not take it off my site, the Fraser family would likely file an injunction against me for copyright infringement.

I've had some experience with intellectual property law in the past. It's nice that Fraser included the copyright notice in the book, but there doesn't need to be an explicit copyright on something for it to be copyrighted. It's protected from the moment it's created.

But that doesn't mean that, by posting some or all of the book, I'm breaking the law.  From the U.S. Copyright Office:

Under the fair use doctrine of the U.S. copyright statute, it is permissible to use limited portions of a work including quotes, for purposes such as commentary, criticism, news reporting, and scholarly reports. There are no legal rules permitting the use of a specific number of words, a certain number of musical notes, or percentage of a work. Whether a particular use qualifies as fair use depends on all the circumstances.

I think it's pretty clear that what I'm doing falls in that category. I'm certainly not trying to make money off of the book or undercut Fraser's ability to distribute it himself.

And because Fraser was expelled for the totality of the book, an argument can be made for posting all 14 pages, as opposed to just selected excerpts.

I asked Shine to write up a cease and desist letter to detail his request and send it to me. He said he wasn't going to do that, as he was not at the office and that he didn't have my mailing address or email address. (My email address, of course, is listed prominently in the sidebar.)

Apparently he felt that asking nicely and invoking the specter of an injunction would be sufficient in convincing me to take down the book.

It is not.