VICKSBURG - Two things I believe to be true:
(1) Federal copyright laws may still be on the books, but they're as dead as Hammurabi and his code.
(2) There may not yet be a Society of Lefthanded Polecat Skinners Who Drive Baby Blue Hummers - but one day there will be and I will offend them.
This is an anniversary year, of sorts, for me as a columnist. It was 20 years ago that I started opinionating for fun and profit. About 10 years ago, newspapers other than Vicksburg's started printing these humble offerings.
The copyright of these words belongs to The Vicksburg Post. Avoiding the legalese, copyright means exactly what it says: the exclusive right to copy, duplicate or publish. Whether something is paid for or not has nothing to do with it. The other Mississippi newspapers have permission to reprint. No one else does.
Yet, especially since the advent of the Internet - and with the sophisticated search tools developed since - this column has been cut and pasted onto Web sites from Seoul to London and been reprinted in newsletters, magazines and doctoral dissertations.
No one - or very, very few - have worried about the Post's copyright.
Many, however, have parsed what was written.
For example, a couple of weeks ago, I wrote about Mississippi's new statute that expands the immunity for citizen use of deadly force.
Gun enthusiasts across America picked up on what they thought was a whiff of anti-gun sentiment, and locked their Glocks on me. It's not easy to tell just how many Web sites have posted the column since, but the e-mails help. "Dear Moron," the polite ones begin, "I read your uninformed words on www.whatever.com and … ."
When I've written about courts and medical malpractice, I've wound up on the Web sites of assorted medical and legal trade groups. When the topic has been education, the column has been "borrowed" for use on the sites of teacher associations or schools.
It's wonderful to receive kind words and unsettling to get threats, but although I'm small-paper and small-time, I'm pretty sure that one thing I have in common with big-timers is that most reactions contain either, "Thank you for your well-researched … ," or, "You need to get your facts straight … " as part of the message.
The increasing precision of Internet tools coupled with the increasing polarization of life in America has been leading to more specialized responses. For instance, people who are interested in the dietary habits of one-eyed walruses can tell their computers to alert them any time the words "one-eyed walrus" and "diet" appear on the Internet.
Through cyberspace, they can pounce on offenders.
Once I wrote about the percentages of child support set in Mississippi law to be paid by a non-custodial parent. It's 14 percent for the first child and only 6 percentage points more for a second child. I figured the lawmakers who came up with this approach must have been thinking all children's needs are priced by the Payless Shoe Source formula. You know, a second pair is usually half-off - so maybe if it cost $100 to take one sick kid to the doctor, the second one can go for $50.
The statute and the column were gender-neutral, but the response of the American Association of Abused Fathers (or something like that) was not. They stayed on my case for months.
Same thing happened recently. I reported - accurately - that FEMA reported a disaster-aid grant had been used for a sex-change operation. The National Transgender Advocacy Coalition demanded I prove the truth of the statement or retract it.
Who knew there was a National Transgender Advocacy Coalition? And anyway, I wasn't picking on them.
A column last fall on Louisiana's bizarre request for more than $250 billion in post-Katrina tax cash (compared to Mississippi's $30 billion) was borrowed by a Web guru in North Carolina.
He called me a "whiner."
That provoked a series of responses on a series of Web sites. The discussion actually picked up pace after one person chimed in with, "I haven't read what Charlie Mitchell wrote, but …"
Anyway, my guess is these words will find their way onto the Web site of the Americans For Repeal of Copyright Laws as well as the Patriots For Protection of Personal Property Rights.
If no such groups yet exist, they will shortly. As will the Society of Lefthanded Polecat Skinners Who Drive Baby Blue Hummers. I just hope they read what I wrote before telling me how wrong I am.
