You know the copyright cops have gone too far when
One of the participants in a workshop I’m archiving emailed me to ask if she could include a credit statement with her entry, since (she said) she was basing her syllabus on material available in textbooks common in her area.
Oh, crud, I thought to myself. I’d already had to expurgate an entry with a bit too much quotation. So I pulled up her PDF to see what was going on.
She hadn’t quoted anything. She hadn’t so much as quoted anything! All she’d done was list titles of pieces in anthologies that she would use to teach the subject matter at hand. I mean, sure, if she wants to credit the textbooks, great—that’s good information. But nothing in the copyright regime says she has to.
It’s enough to make a repository-rat go feral, I tell you what.