Klarinet Archive - Posting 001076.txt from 2000/02

From: LeliaLoban@-----.com
Subj: [kl] English is Easy
Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2000 19:56:11 -0500

"Cindy in Germany" sent in a poem, "English is Tough Stuff," with the
notation, "Author Unknown." I love the poem, but . . . oh, dear, here we go
again. "English is Tough Stuff" appears, with the same introduction and the
same lack of credit to the author, on several Internet sites, including this
joke site:

http://www.bestiary.com/moose/humour/pronounce.html

On Wednesday, 25 Aug 1999, Nicky Hewgill left a message appended at the end
of the poem on that site. Hewgill identifies the author as, "Tony Bladon, a
phonetics lecturer in Oxford in the 80's (probably still is for all I know).
The original last line was something like 'Never, ever mispronounce Bladon'.
(He was tetchy about it, apparently.) I've got a dog-eared original that he
gave me somewhere."

Since Hewgill states that he is acquainted with the author and owns a copy of
the original poem, with a different text, I think that, tempting as it is to
pass this clever work along, we should not circulate it. We don't know the
author's intention. Who owns the rights? Did Bladon (if it's accurate that
he wrote the poem) deliberately place the verse in the public domain, or does
unauthorized transmission violate his copyright or that of the purchaser, if
any? Did the author modify the poem himself or has someone else monkeyed
with it, to make the current version a corrupt text? The fact that somewhere
along the line, someone deleted the author's byline, tells me it's likely
that distribution of the poem without the author's permission violates his
copyright.

Lelia

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