Turtleʼs Thoughts on Legality

by William Jackson on 1999-07-20

In recent editions of this article, I admit that I have crossed the line of acceptable humor. Several of my “clients” have informed me of this. I would like to publicly apologize for any inconveniences I may have caused and inform you that there will be many changes made to this column in the near future. Now that the inevitable is over, let me move on to the business at hand: generating a few laughs.

I have also been recently informed that my so called “Legal Disclaimer” not only distracts from the “humor” of the article, but is absolutely worthless and would not hold up in any court, should I be taken there for some reason. As I now understand it, all legal such and such must be written in ALL CAPS before it takes effect. What kind of rule is this? Iʼm not sure, but it probably must follow a set pattern as well. That may be why many legal notices appear the same. If someone copyrighted the phrases most often used in the legal notices, I suppose they could make a fortune on the royalties alone.

Accordingly, in this and subsequent articles, the “Legal Disclaimer” will be dropped. There will be no copyrights, no trademarks, nothing to prevent others from snatching my work and calling it their own. Oh well, I donʼt care. I have a wonderful thing called trust. Trust is unknown in the business world. I made the mistake of diving into deep water, and I have paid the price. The price was the disapproval of some of you. I wonʼt name names, but you know who you are and I thank you for your timely input.

If you were expecting more humor this week, Iʼm sorry. Perhaps I can be funny every other week. If you can put up with this, let me know. I have found that Thoughts are not always humorous, but they are always thoughtful. “Come see the serious side of Turtle.”

This is Turtle, signing off.

Any questions, comments, suggestions, and/or other feedback concerning this or any other article in the Turtleʼs Thoughts series can be sent to minijackson@juno.com.

Unless something really bad happens, Turtleʼs Thoughts will reach you Tuesday (Central Standard Time, USA) each week.