You should always be careful about what you put on-line. I run a web site for a non-profit that, without thinking about it, placed a historic photo belonging to the San Diego Historical Society. SDHS notified us VERY quickly that we had to remove the offending photo or suffer the consequences. If we wanted to keep the photo there they would have licensed it to us for big money.
Except that the SDHS doesn't actually own any rights to most of the stuff they claim to be the guardians of. Many of those photos are available from other sources - the very same sources from which the SDHS got them in the first place. And much of the rest have long ago fallen into the public domain.
The SDHS is in many ways just as anal as Bill Gates. It's not that they place so much value in what they have (they don't charge you to look at it after all) as much as they get all puffed up by placing themselves in the position of requiring others to ask their permission first. It's more a matter of just keeping others from having something.
I don't know if anyone has ever challenged their claims, but then what's the point for the most part. Permission is almost always given and no one ever actually gets sued for not asking.
It's not that hard to get away with putting on a hard hat and an orange vest, setting up some barriers and digging a hole in the street. Who's going to ask questions as long as you fill the hole up again?
I also was involved with mailing lists where people felt that they were libeled. I was personally threatened with a lawsuit in one, and actually sued in another. Truth is the single best defense for libel, but you could go bankrupt defending yourself even if you were in the right.
Regards, Lew "Totally believing in Liability Umbrella Insurance" Wolfgang
The easy solution is to live in fear and never write anything but fiction. It all reminds me of Stewart's tag line "Terrorism only works if you change what you are doing".
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Best Regards,
~DJA.--
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