10 July 2015, in response to A Special Note to the Writers at The Dollop:

First, hey girl.

I’m going to tell you a story about a podcast.

The format of The Dollop is me reading a factual and historical story, and then Gary and I doing our best to crack wise about it. I assemble these stories from many sources each week. One of our rarely used sources, an online author, has publicly stated that The Dollop plagiarized their work and violated their copyright.

I will admit to making a mistake here that has led to this situation. And it’s a Dollop worthy mistake. While every story is sourced, I have not posted them because we have had no official website. I now have one and am putting up all the sources and creating links of the episodes. I apologize for this. But The Dollop isn’t plagiarism, and it isn’t copyright infringement. Listeners of The Dollop understand that I do no original research on the historical facts we tell jokes about. It’s clear that I’m reading the words of other people, through my tone of voice, my constant referring to reading something, and my endless mispronunciations. Plagiarism would be me representing those words as my own, and I’ve never done that.

As for copyright infringement, historical facts are not copyrightable. And they shouldn’t be. There are only so many ways to say that on May 8th, 1936, a horse jockey named Ralph Neves was riding in the third race of the day at Bay Meadows Racecourse. Or that Peter Tomarken hosted “Press Your Luck.”

Once these facts are unearthed by someone, anyone is free to use them. It may not seem fair, but that’s the way it is. Facts are facts. The law doesn’t⁠⁠—and can’t⁠⁠—protect them. They’re free for anyone to use for any purpose.

Most importantly, the point of The Dollop is for Gary and me to tell “funny jokes” about these historical stories. Our “jokes” more often than not are based on political and satirical commentary and criticism of the story we’re discussing and its underlying themes. The law allows for the use of even copyrighted works for commentary, criticism, parody, and satire under something called “fair use.” Fair use is speech that is protected under the First Amendment and federal law. It’s important.

When a teacher discusses a news article in their classroom, that’s fair use. When Jon Stewart uses Fox News clips on the Daily Show, that’s fair use. When a documentary shows part of a copyrighted film or shows some copyrighted text, that’s fair use. Fair use doesn’t require seeking permission in advance. Fair use allows for criticism, commentary, parody, and satire, which is The Dollop.

To the extent that I didn’t properly attribute the source material for our funny commentary, I promise to do a better job going forward, and I apologize. To the extent that The Dollop is not funny, I really apologize. I also generally apologize for Gary. But I am not a plagiarist, and The Dollop is not copyright infringement. We are half naked in our logo, though.

Archived text from the original.