Some Blog Site

Alpha has found a series of books at the library, and he’s gone through a few of them now.

It’s called Heroes A²Z, and I am not really reviewing the books so don’t assume that I’m recommending them here.

But I do really like the disclaimer. All works of fiction are required to have a disclaimer that says they are fictional. It is a fairly standard disclaimer and so it is very familiar. And familiarity breeds apathy, so I’m guessing that most people just skip the disclaimers.

What caught my eye with the first book (Alien Ice Cream) is that it was dedicated to the Captain, Steve Yzerman, and the story is set in Traverse City. Wanting to know more about the book, its author, and its publisher, I read the fine print at the beginning of the book.

I was amused at the disclaimer, which reads somewhat like this: “This book is fiction. The people, places, and events depicted within are fictitious. Any resemblance to persons living or dead or to real life places is purely coincidence and, in all honesty, probably a little disturbing.”

I even took pictures of the disclaimers for books 2, 3, and 6. Click on the pictures for larger versions.

After taking the pictures, I noticed that I am forbidden from repeating that disclaimer to you. “No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in part …”

Do you like the irony of the previous paragraph?

In theory, that means I couldn’t even post the title of the book. Also in theory, I couldn’t use the number 26. Because there is a page 26 in the Heroes A²Z book, and it has the characters “26” on that page.

So I must turn off the engineer part of my brain and the blogger part of my brain will assume fair use. There must be some reasonable interpretation of the ban on reproducing the contents of the book. Otherwise, I might be afraid to read the book aloud to my kids.

Are the copyright and other legal notices considered part of the copyrighted work?