A PUBLISHING SCANDAL INVOLVING RANDOM HOUSE AND COPYRIGHT CLEARANCE CENTER, INC. A fair use/permission overcharge scheme. Also an excellent primer for journalists on fair use/permissions law.

    /24-7PressRelease.com/ - April 13, 2005 - During the first quarter of 2005 PublishAmerica published Shawn Patrick Thornton's non-fiction book, IN DEFENSE OF THE CHRIST: WHY JESUS WOULD DISOWN CHRISTIANITY, ISBN 1-4137-4613-6.While seeking permission for republication of various excerpts for this book Shawn encountered a fair use/permission overcharge scheme at both Random House, New York and Copyright Clearance Center, Inc.
Any journalist may request an article written by Shawn Patrick Thornton about that overcharge scheme setting out the law, the relevant facts, the application of the law to the facts and then a proposed solution to what may be a wide-spread publishing industry problem. Simply contact Shawn at [email protected] and he will E-mail a print-ready copy of that article, as well as grant its cost free use.
As an alternative, any journalist may extract the facts (E-mails from Random House, legal items, etc) from that article and then write his or her own version, provided that a summary of In Defense of the Christ: Why Jesus would Disown Christianity (similar to the one in the article), the books ISBN number and the author's name is included in that article. And, that a copy of the newly written article, or of Shawn's original article, with the name and date of the publication is E-mailed to Shawn Patrick Thornton at the above E-mail address. The legal discussion, although very carefully done, can be easily compared with various legal summaries of fair use/permissions law on the Web. Journalists may also request an Adobe 6 Reader copy of Shawn's book at no cost.

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