Hail Sapience,

Greetings librarians of Sapience. WIth the advent of libraries, it
occured to me that it would be wise to establish a few rules for
gentlemanly interaction within the community (and, naturally,
gentlewomanly interaction, but that adjective is utterly made up so I
didn't indulge in it anywhere but this parenthetical note.)

The goal of this post is to establish a reasonable code by which all
libraries will comply, concerning intellectual property rights and the
thievery thereof.

It seems to be in everybody's best interest that books which are unique
to a single library (ie, those not available in Thera) ought to be
protected somehow. This way whenever you have a book that is unique,
someone can't buy it, copy it, and put it up in their library for a
lesser rental price. The code acts as follows:

I. Copywritten material will be clearly labelled as such.

A. Any material which the library owns shall within the first two pages
include copyright information- in the format of "Copyright 11th of Ero,
331 years after the fall of the Seleucarian Empire, Lord Drake Sigao
Saer'rac."

B. Any material used with consent of owner will within the first two
pages include copyright information- in the format of "Copyright 11th of
Ero, 331 years after the fall of the Seleucarian Empire. Used by the
Ashtani Public Library with permission of Lord Drake Sigao Saer'rac"

C. Any material which is not copyrighted is considered public domain,
and will include within the first two pages copyright information- in
the format of "Public Domain"

II. Copywritten material will not be used without the explicit written
permission of the owner

A. Any librarian violating this principle will be blacklisted- authors
will be warned that they do not respect copyright laws and no other
librarian will allow them as a member.

B. Blacklisting can be amended by removing the offense and paying a fine
to the owner, the details of which are left to the two of them.

III. Copywritten material can be transferred by the owner.

A. The owner of a piece is taken to be the author, unless he has already
sold the piece.

B. The piece itself may be sold and used with permission of author- the
length of time with which it can be sold ought to be documented by both
parties- it may range from a specific date range to "as long as the
current owner retains rights."

C. The rights to the piece may be sold, at which time the owner is free
to keep the piece in his or her own library, and/or sell the piece as
outlined in III.B.

This was just the first set of rules that came off the top of my head,
It should probably be hammered out a bit more before we all agree to it-
but I think that it's a good concept, and that we should perhaps form a
clan to hammer out how the specifics work.

~Lord Drake Sigao Saer'rac

Penned by my hand on the 4th of Phaestian, in the year 396 AF.