While intrepidly exploring rec.food.drink.tea, Space Cowboy rolled
initiative and posted the following:

> An Ad Hominem accusation cannot apply to institutions or in this
> case a generational reference only a person. The common
> accepted use of troll is someone looking for an argument for any
> reason. I'm just protecting my intellectual property illegally
> usurped by a website. Private coversations cannot be copyright
> unless published. Even if you published something in 98 I first
> posted about my cheatsheet of Chinese and English tea terms here
> in 95. Copyright law has the Doctrine of Antecedent where I
> could have a ruling to apply my rosetta characterization in 2004
> to all my previous posts about the subject starting in 95. The
> John Kerry reference has already morphed into the colloquial
> "I'm not at liberty to say who" similar to wardrobe malfunction
> "for any unplanned contingency".

Actually, Ad Hominem is attempting to discredit my position based
on a irrelevant personal characteristic. The generation in which I
was born is an irrelevant personal characteristic that neither
supports your assertion that I support plagiarism nor invalidates
my assertion that you're acting like a troll - since much of your
behavior fits the definition of "troll" you provided.

The point about the private conversation is not that the
conversation was copyrighted. The point is that the idea of
translating between languages using a cheatsheet is not new, and
was not originated by you. It is a public domain behavior that
millions of people have engaged in - particularly in language
classes.


While copyright law as a Doctrine of Antecedent, it also does not
allow you to copyright "ideas, procedures, methods, systems,
processes, concepts, principles, discoveries or devices" except in
the actual "description, explanation or illustration."

Nor can you copyright works "Works consisting entirely of
information that is common property and containing no original
authorship". Both Chinese and English are common property.

(http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html#wwp)


The concept you claim is yours has been around for at least a
hundred years. You can't copyright the process, and you can't
copyright the languages. What you can copyright is the description
you gave of the process.

So until Mike starts quoting you without citation, you've got
nothing.


--
Derek

There is no greater joy than soaring high on the wings of your
dreams, except maybe the joy of watching a dreamer who has nowhere
to land but in the ocean of reality.