The fact that other websites have chosen to publish the story doesn't make it right. Try telling the cop that it's not right to arrest you for going 64 in a 55mph zone, because 4 other people just passed you going faster.
When F&S published it in 2010, they made specific mention of obtaining permission from Dartmouth College--which owns the rights to all of the original Corey Ford material, from which this version of the story comes. Back when I used to frequent the SSM BB, someone did the same thing over there. I raised the same point. Shooting Sportsman agreed. Probably because, like F&S, they are a real print and ink publication. But internet rights are covered under the same rules as all other rights to republish. When I sell an article, I only sell first North American rights, unless there's a different agreement. Which means the magazine to which I sell it cannot publish it on their website--nor can anyone else publish it without my permission. If someone owns the rights to the material, while you can publish short quotes, you cannot LEGALLY publish the entire story anywhere without the permission of whomever owns the rights to the material.
My goal here is not to keep anyone from reading anything Corey Ford wrote. It's to keep people like Dave, who owns this website, from potentially ending up in trouble. Same goes for the other websites listed above, who chose not to follow THE SAME RULE THAT FIELD & STREAM FOLLOWED WHEN THEY PUBLISHED THE STORY. The permission that F&S received from Dartmouth College was for F&S specifically. Not for other people who read F&S, subscribe to F&S, etc. That permission does not pertain to anyone except F&S, for that specific use.
This has become a really big deal with writers with the growth in the internet, and a lot of people running websites who don't understand the rules. Most of the time they get by because what they're doing "flies under the radar". But if it's a website on which I participate, I never hesitate to issue a warning that by doing something like this, you're risking getting the website into trouble.
Last edited by L. Brown; 10/28/19 10:21 AM.
