There's No Place Like Summer Camp?

[Guest Katiya Damodred]

"You! Where are you going?"

 

"I'm on my way to jail."

 

The guard favored me with a suspicious, cursory glare. She eyed me up and down, her eyes marking out the tattooed stars and moons on the inside of my left wrist. Tossing a raven black lock over one shoulder, she shifted her weight between her feet, and her right hand rose to hover by her side, ready to dart out and seize me should I try to run. I wasn't going to, not if things went well.

 

"Where's your guard?" she sneered.

 

"I was told to just walk over here; something about getting our flag." I made a show of glaring at the guard, and she preened under my angry gaze. Well, it was supposed to be angry, although I felt no anger. Nervousness yes, but anger no.

 

"Are you sure you're a prisoner?" It seemed to be half-hearted question, something she felt she had to ask. Already her eyes were slipping around me to scan the open field in front of the tree line.

 

"Would I be here if I weren't?" I asked, trying very hard to make it sound as if this were the most ludicrous idea imaginable. I was certain she would see through it when her eyes snapped back to me, certain that I had overplayed my hand. But she jerked her head back to the spattering of trees too sparse to be called a thicket. "By the lake," she told me curtly, and then she was running back to her position, eating up ground like a starving worm. I walked deeper into enemy territory.

 

I know what you're thinking. What soldier in what army could be that stupid? And what the hell was going on anyway? What war was this? Well, the army was actually the Loony Toons “army”, so called because of the tattoos on their left wrists of the famous characters that balanced my "army's" moons and stars. The soldier was a girl I knew by sight if not by name, and the war was the infamous War of the Flag, circa 2002, on ye olde battleground, Church Camp. In layman's terms, I was at church camp playing Capture the Flag, a ridiculous game that everyone took much too seriously. So we loved it.

 

I sauntered in among the trees and was immediately intercepted by fleet-footed, wild-eyed female guards. I spread my hands in supplication as five or six skidded to a halt, forming a circle around me.

 

"Where are you going?" asked a wiry redhead with sharp green eyes and a face that never smiled.

 

"To jail."

 

"Where's your guard?"

 

"Relax, everything's ok, I talked to some black-haired chick up there, she told me to walk on down." Being at church camp, I did have certain standards when it came to this game. I hadn't really lied, just bent the truth a little. Was it my fault they heard what they wanted to hear?

 

This bunch was not so easily fooled, though. A skinny blonde girl crept closer and raised her hand above my wrist. It looked more like a claw than a hand; the girl looked as though she hadn't eaten in five years.

 

"How come they sent you down here alone? How do we know you're really caught?"

 

"There was something about capturing our flag, something about them being close." That was true, although I had heard it from our team's defensive leader, not from my supposed guard. I smiled what I hoped was a convincing, winning smile as sweat trickled down my back. I hadn't been attending camp since I was two, unlike most of the people here, so I wasn't very well known. I pressed that advantage hard, knowing they didn't know me, knowing they didn't know what I was capable of. I tried to appear innocent, maybe even a little cowed by their experience compared to my obvious inexperience. "You can tag me, but what good would it do?"

 

"We just like to be sure," Red said, her face splitting in a humorless grin. The skeletal blonde's hand shot out and snagged only air. I was gone, darting through the ring of girls and racing toward the small wooden dock that served as a jail. My teammates huddled close together, watching me curiously. Our team's unofficial offensive leader, a boy as reckless as he was stupid, jumped up and down, waving his arms like a madman trying to fly.

 

"Jailbreak!" I screeched as I plowed into the mass of humanity. I slapped the nearest three hands (you were only allowed three hand slaps, thereby setting only three people free, but they could, in turn, free others) and began pelting up the hill. The Loony Toons had chosen their guards carefully and well; each girl had the agility of a hyper Chihuahua and the speed of a sick cheetah. Which is to say, they were still pretty fast, if not the fastest things on earth. I dodged past Red, whose snarling face belonged on a monster.

 

"Let's go!" I heard our offensive leader cry. Was his name Michael?

 

I became aware of pounding feet on the hill behind me, though I didn't dare look around to see if they belonged to friend or foe. My heart hammered in my chest, and I pulled air into my lungs in short, wheezing gasps. My legs flashed beneath me as I sprinted the short distance to the neutral meadow between our territory and theirs.

 

I leapt onto the jutting wooden structure they called a stage, although any actor that stepped up on it probably wouldn't survive the performance. My extra momentum carried my forward, and I performed I faultless somersault. The stage groaned, and I scrambled down the other side, collapsing in a panting, sweat-drenched heap on the springy summer grass.

 

Whoops and angry shouts echoed around the meadow. The jailbreak had been discovered, as had the means. I caught the word "cheating" more than a few times, usually followed by words that should NOT have been said at church camp. I lay on the grass, breathing hard and praying that my team found me before the other. They couldn't tag me of course, but bodily harm could only be prevented if someone was there to witness it.

 

I sat up and shaded my eyes against the glaring sun. I was hot and sweaty; my clothes clung to me like a second, baggy, uncomfortable skin. Wisps of hair so dark it was nearly black had escaped my ponytail in my mad flight/rescue, and they hung down on my face, dripping thin, salty trails through the dirt.

 

A sharp piercing whistle erupted from near our territory, signifying the end of the game. I climbed to my feet and staggered toward the real stage, a massive wooden thing with two wide wings sailing from its main square. Steel towers perhaps fifty feet high soared into the air at two opposite corners of the stage, and a stick attached to a mud-streaked blue bandana hung down from one. That was our flag. Next to it was a pink bandana, their flag. We had won.

 

I cheered with my teammates, and received no few congratulations on my daring jailbreak. Most didn't seem to care that I had "cheated". After the fourth person told me it was wrong, but ok with them, I stopped trying to explain that I HADN'T cheated. I had bent the truth, and there was nothing in the rules against that. But no one seemed to care, and after a while, it didn't matter to me either. Even the Loony Toons admired my skill, except for Red and her cronies, many of whom were the girls that had lost me in that final confrontation in the trees. The dark-haired girl that let me through in the first place grinned and laughed at herself. She was the only person to recognize the fact that I hadn't lied to anyone, and therefore, had not cheated.

 

"All right, all right!" the camp leader shouted over the din. He raised his hands and the muttering died away, leaving a sea of smiling, sweaty faces. "You all stink!" he said, waving his arms to waft away the smell. The crowd tittered in agreement.

 

"You do too, Darrel!" someone shouted. More laughter greeted that, and Darrel, a gray-haired man in his late fifties, laughed a solid, broken up laughter that was somehow charming. He scrubbed at his own sweaty, sun-dark face, pausing to push his glasses up the bridge of his nose. They slid back down again.

 

"I see you, Richard!" he shouted warningly, grinning to show he was joking. "See if you get supper tonight!"

 

"I'll just eat my peaches!" was the return. Everyone laughed at that, even Darrel. His nickname was Peaches, for reasons unknown to lower campers, those that hadn't been attending most of our lives. I had been told it had something to do with a pink shirt he had once worn.

 

"Ok, ok, I get the picture," Darrel said, waving his hands in a dismissive gesture. "Come on, everyone, back to your camps and get showers!" A general roar of approval surged through the campers, and as one we began the slow trudge back to our cabins.

 

I stared at the ground as I walked, hardly aware of the swirling, shifting mass of humanity around me. I was too often like that at camp; quiet, alone, and miserable. I had no friends here, not really, not like everyone else. This was my second year at Senior High Camp, and the old feelings of loneliness and homesickness were starting to seep back into me, just as they had last year. I wanted nothing more than to go home, but I couldn't. Everyone felt that way at first, so many campers said. But they sure as hell didn't show it, not with the way they ran around all happy and carefree, talking to people they'd seen all through the year. I was from a different district, so I didn't get to see all these people. I knew almost no one.

 

Not that I was one of those people that hangs out at the edges of crowds, perpetually terrified of groups. I was exactly the opposite. I was bold, exciting, fun to be around, the life of the party...well, maybe not the LIFE, more like the appetizer. Something about camp just made me shut down inside, though I couldn't tell you what it was to save my life.

 

"Hey Kat," someone said, tapping me on the shoulder. I looked up at one of my friends, a girl with a wide forehead, a nose that was overbold at best, and hair the color of old straw. No one would call her beautiful, but she had a great personality, and so was always in the company of one or more guys. I envied her for that, but she was one reason camp was even bearable.

 

"Hey Heather," I said, grinning at her through the grime and sweat that made a stiff mask of my face. She looked almost as bad, with that wavy, yet somehow drab hair trailing down onto her bony shoulders. "We beat you," I told her without the faintest hint of pride or arrogance.

 

"Yeah, only because Danny was hiding by one of the bushes at Open Air." That would be Open Air Chapel, called simply Open Air by the campers and staffers. The Loony Toons' flag had been suspended from a low roof beam inside it, nearly impossible to get. "He recruited a whole bunch of his jock friends, and we caught most of them, but we overlooked Danny, and he stole it while most of us were leading the others to jail." She eyed me sideways and grinned wider. "The EMPTY jail."

 

I smiled at the ground. A muffled “yeah” was all I could muster.

 

"That was amazing, Kat! And you did it all without cheating! Sooo cool."

 

"Of course, if I had been guarding the trees, none of that would have happened," said a voice from my other side. Heather's eyes went over my head (an easy feat, since I was not overly tall and she was) to the boy that had appeared on my right. Rather small, with dark hair and startling green eyes in a freckled face, Ben was a good friend of hers, but since they had adopted me, I found one on either side of me more and more of late.

 

"Right," I said, giggling and tripping at the same time. We all shared a good laugh over that, and kept the talk pleasant and light as we approached Crossroads, the place where Ben would wander to his cabins with the rest of the guys, and Heather and I would find our way to the girls'.

 

We said our goodbyes quickly, and then we were off, tearing across a low hill to the ring of old-fashioned log cabins. I waved to Heather as we split to our separate ones; she didn't notice, but I couldn't blame her. She had farther to go than I did.

 

I made a disgusted face as I felt new sweat gush from every pore. At eleven o'clock the sun was a roiling golden hub of flame spinning through the cloudless blue sky, and I knew it would be a scorcher of a day. I half-leapt onto the low porch in front of my cabin, flinging the screen door open with such force that it rebounded against the far wall, angering some black wasps that had been nesting around the corner. I sped through the door, grabbed some clothes and toiletries out of my bag, hooked a towel over my shoulder, and was already racing toward the shower house before the other girls had quite left Crossroads. When there were only eight showers available for fifty girls, you learned to run.

 

My chest was heaving as I crashed into the shower house. My legs burned, and I glistened from head to toe as if I had already taken my shower. My stink betrayed the lie, though, and I wasted no time in stripping to my birthday suit and climbing into the cool water. By the time the noise of the other girls began echoing around the dingy, none-to-clean shower house, I had scrubbed even the most caked on dirt and sweat off me, and was just stepping out of the shower.

 

Girls in every state of dress (or undress) made a thick forest of bodies in the shower house. They were crowded around the benches, or clutching towels and shampoos to chests as they waited in line. A few modest girls were tossing clothes out of shower stalls, hoping they would snag on something before they hit the floor. Realizing I had little room to move, let alone change, I gathered my clothes and toiletries, holding them between four fingers as I attempted to keep my towel around me. I tottered to the door and stumbled out onto the lawn, bent double with the effort of holding my things and not entertaining the boys’ camp. Not that they would be able to see me.

 

It occurred to me that I must look like a hunchback, half lumbering, half scurrying across the grass as I was, but at the moment I didn’t care. All the girls were either in their cabins, deciding to brave the lines a little later or forgoing the shower altogether (gross), or in the shower house itself. Besides, whom did I have to impress? So I did a pretty good imitation of Quasimodo in the bell tower until I regained the safety of my cabin.

 

Dumping my things on the floor near my bed, I toweled off and changed into cool, clean clothes. The light cotton tee shirt and thin khaki shorts felt like silk against my damp skin when compared with the sweat-drenched things I had been wearing. I stuffed those in the garbage bag I had brought for laundry, grimacing as I did so. My hair hung in false, water-induced dreadlocks around my face, and I pushed them aside impatiently as I gathered my dirty clothes from previous days. Might as well get some house cleaning done.

 

The door opened, and a wave of musky perfume assailed my nostrils. I made a face at the bag, but it was gone when I straightened. I was almost used to the horrid scent by now, though I thought even a corpse would roll over in its grave to avoid it. It was no use telling Aubrey that, though. She ADORED the smell of Floral Bouquet, and bugger what everyone else thought of it.

 

“Oh Kat, are you the only one in here?”

 

“Yea.” I learn fast. It had taken me all of two minutes to realize that one did not waste one’s breath on windy responses for Aubrey. She would hear maybe ten syllables. And that was a strong maybe.

 

“I was SO excited that we won, weren’t you?” I didn’t bother answering, which was just as well because she nattered on, just as she would have done even if I had spoken. “I thought for sure they’d get the flag when Richard made that dash for it, but Danny was faster. I should have known; Danny’s ALWAYS been the faster one. Darrel says so too; we talk about those guys all the time. They love me like a little sister.” She smiled the distant smile of a girl who knows she’s well looked after and enjoys it but pretends as if it’s nothing more than so many potatoes. Aubrey was like that. She was one of those people that never stopped talking about all their connections in high places; in this case, it was the fact that Darrel was her youth minister and all the “popular guys” were part of her youth group. I had my doubts as to how strong all those ties were; they certainly weren’t as strong as she liked to believe. If the chick got on my nerves, Danny and the others would have dropped her like a pair of weighted dice in a game with street toughs. Eager to prove they had nothing to do with her, they would run as far and as fast from her as they could.

 

“Mmmhmm,” I answered, tossing the garbage bag back into my corner. Aubrey gave what she imagined to be a gay and careless chuckle, but that rather sounded like a donkey with laryngitis. She scrambled squirrel-like onto the top bed of the bunk cattycorner from mine, still carrying on about the stupid game. I tuned her out, collapsing back onto my bed and staring at the wooden beams. After a time, I lay the crook of my elbow over my eyes, shutting out all forms of light.

 

I had just begun to nod off when the chatter of annoying, high voices and the patter of bare feet announced the arrival of the cabins’ other occupants. I always felt alone among them, for a lot of reasons that made little sense.

 

For the most part, they were the type of girls that rolled out of bed looking perfect. Every hair was in place, their complexions flawless, their pajamas as neat as if just pressed, and for them, it wasn’t enough. They rose hours before necessary just to make themselves look more perfect. The cabin floor was littered with hair dryers and curling irons and make-up kits as big as my suitcase. Most of them had brought three travel bags (if not more), and each had been stuffed with the most perfect kinds of clothes. One girl, Thea, seemed to have brought her entire wardrobe, everything from shorts and tee shirts to dress slacks and roomy faux silk blouses. Yes, for a weeklong summer camp.

 

I, in contrast, had one bag, and while it was by no means stuffed with every tee shirt and pair of shorts I owned, it did hold a good amount of it. I had brought one pair of pajamas, seven pairs of shorts, and ten tee shirts. I was an efficient packer, make no mistake, but neither had I brought all the extra geegaws everyone else seemed to find not only handy, but necessary. I had my shampoo and conditioner and body wash and sponge thing, my razor and toothbrush and toothpaste and face wash, and two towels. I carried one small bag of make-up, and of course my hair brush. That was the extent of the home comforts I brought with me. I had one pair of shoes (sneakers) and ten pairs of white socks. Are you beginning to see why I felt so out of place?

 

Yeah, it was church camp. I had tried to explain to my parents why it was really just like every other teen gathering down through the relentless passage of ages, but they never understood. They believed that by attaching the word “church” to an event, all the usual adolescent animosities vanished in a holy, religious smoke. In actuality, church was the perfect place to show how much more money you had than everyone else, and weren’t you doing a great job, going to church camp and obeying God and earning a respectable place in society? Praise? No, no, please, you were just doing your Christian duty; showing the world how special you were. The people I went to camp with made me sick.

 

Not everyone was like that, though. I spent most of my time away from the cabin, and as soon as the chatter of rich, shallow girls filled the oppressive interior, I swung out of bed and forced a smile to my lips. They smiled at me, inquiring where I was going, and I told them I had showered and was going to head down to the Hall for lunch. I felt them take in my dripping, dreadlock hair, forest green tank top and khaki shorts. I forced my mouth into a cheery, mocking, cheerleader smile and waved. They waved back, never once letting their pleasant, ‘we are the good little angels of the world’ smiles slip. The saddest part of it was, they honestly believed there was nothing wrong with the way they behaved. The animals at the top of the totem couldn’t help it if that’s where they were carved, could they? They HAD to look down on everyone else; their station demanded it, right? I hurried away before I disgusted myself further.

 

Not really looking where I was going, I careened into Heather just before crossing the road that ran at the base of the hill. The road was one of only two paved things on the whole grounds, and it ran like an ugly black wound across the uninterrupted greenery.

 

Heather stumbled as I plowed into her back and she turned, her dark, too big eyes wide in her golden face before realizing it was me.

 

“Good grief, Kat, what’s on your tail?” she asked, catching me as I tripped over the edge of the pavement. (In case you couldn’t guess, balance and I were ancient enemies.) I scowled at the treacherous break from grass to pavement for a minute before giving Heather a grateful look.

 

“Society,” I told her, and she laughed. We shared the same view of rich peoples’ view of the world, and we both agreed that the girls in my cabin were the worst here at camp. She had offered more than once to let me spend the night in her cabin, but each time I declined, because sleep was important to me.

 

“Yeah,” she said, glancing over her shoulder. She raised her voice to be heard over the steady crunch of gravel as we started down the path to the Dining Hall. “How much do you wanna bet that Thea and Daryl are the last two girls to come down for lunch?”

 

“Nothing. I don’t have any money to lose.”

 

“It’s kind of disgusting, you know? I mean, we’re at church CAMP, not beauty school! Who are they trying to impress here anyway?” The echo of my thoughts of earlier made me give a sharp nod.

 

“Oh, better wait for Ben,” Heather said suddenly, catching my arm. I had continued on, not even aware that we had come to Crossroads. Ben came jogging down the gravel path seconds later, and he joined us in our methodic plodding to lunch.

 

We talked of the stupidity of Thea and the rest for some length, and by then we had reached the only other stretch of paving on the campgrounds. The parking lot in front of the information center radiated heat, sending watery shimmers into the air. We approached the jagged edge, the transfer from gravel to paving, and just like that, time seemed to slow to a crawl.

 

Have you ever seen those movies where something momentous is about to happen and everything goes into slow motion? Things that would take seconds take minutes, and everything gets a little fuzzy around the edges. Even sound loses the flat quality it usually carries and ends up echoing worse than a shout at the Grand Canyon. Every voice becomes deeper, and each moment is suspended with crystal clarity, except at the edges, where it gets fuzzy as it bleeds hesitantly back into reality. That was what happened to me.

 

Yes, it’s embarrassing. No one was falling over a cliff or anything earth shattering like that, but those old-time heavyweights, undefeated Gravity and rarely defeated (at least by me) Balance teamed up against me. Grabbing one arm each, the two champions wrestled me over to the grinning pavement edge. Balance operated my foot, and Gravity did the rest. (One day, I’m going to kill that Newton guy.)

 

My foot caught the transitional edge and I went down. My hands flew out to catch me, but the hot pavement only succeeded in scorching them. My wrists folded like paper, and my head struck the ground with a thud that resounded in the slow motion world I was in. I glimpsed Heather’s concerned face looming over me before everything went black.

 

<i>grimaces as he tries to fix the html and fails. sorry! -Peredhil</i> Edited by: peredhil31 at: 12/27/02 4:23:01 pm

Edited April 29, 2004 by Alaeha

[Gyrfalcon]

*applauds* It's interesting to get a story out of that strange thing known as RL (Or at least setting it in a plausible RL setting) and making it worth reading. Good work, Katiya.

[Guest Katiya Damodred]

Wow, the subject came out all ready and stuff- my computer is reading my mind. Yes, much thanks for the praise; its not really all that serious, just something I put up here for a friend to read. I'm toying around with it, but it really just sprang from a need to describe the whole opening scene. Its based on true events, you know, only what actually happened was the jailbirds kind of wandered around like dazed sheep, and maybe three of us got out unscathed. The guards raised one hell of a fuss about my "bending the truth". But oh well. Maybe I'll continue with it. <HTML><BODY>

 

<a Target="_top" href="http://www.flamingtext.com/ezb.html" >

 

<img src="http://ezb.flamingtext.com/ezb/01/10/19/flamingtext_com.08499432.jpg"

 

border=0 alt="Image by FlamingText.com"></a>

 

<br>Image by <a href="http://www.flamingtext.com/ezb2.html">FlamingText.com</a>

 

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[Peredhil]

A long read but well worth it. Keep writing!

 

I tried to enable your html (radio button to the right, between the subject and the text body) but it didn't work.

Edited April 29, 2004 by Alaeha

[Guest Carlyan the Wise]

Please do... they way you wrote it was good, and it makes me wonder what happened next. A good subject that deserves a longer story, if you ask me.

[Guest Katiya Damodred]

I have a question about copyright infringement, and I'm sure you knowledgeable folks here at the Pen will know the answer, if only because no one else seems to.

 

Is it possible to use characters and settings from another work, not to claim them as your own, but to...Ok, suppose a character in a story I wrote dreamed she was in the world of, oh say, Wheel of Time (WOT). Could I tell the story of her dream, using the WOT world and characters but making clear that I did not invent them? Is it copyright infringement to do so?

 

I'd appreciate an answer ASAP. Thanks so much!

 

-Katiya

Edited April 29, 2004 by Alaeha

[reverie]

hmm... well, you usually have to ask permission of the author do to something like that legally... when i registered my works in congress, the forms would ask if you work was a derivative of another copyrighted work...

 

could try look here for help:

 

www.copyright.umn.edu/home.htm

 

but i look here the most for info:

 

www.loc.gov/copyright/

 

these interesting:

 

How much of someone else's work can I use without getting permission?

 

Under the fair use doctrine of the U.S. copyright statute, it is permissible to use limited portions of a work including quotes, for purposes such as commentary, criticism, news reporting, and scholarly reports. There are no legal rules permitting the use of a specific number of words, a certain number of musical notes, or percentages of a work. Whether a particular use qualifies as fair use depends on all the circumstances. See Circular 21 and FL 102.

 

www.loc.gov/copyright/circs/circ21.pdf

 

www.loc.gov/copyright/cir...ex.html#fl

 

How much do I have to change in order to claim copyright in someone else's work?

 

Only the owner of copyright in a work has the right to prepare, or to authorize someone else to create a new version of that work. Accordingly, you cannot claim copyright to another's work, no matter how much you change it, unless you have the owner's consent. See Circular 14.

 

How do I get permission to use somebody else's work?

 

You can ask for it. If you know who the copyright owner is, you may contact the owner directly. If you are not certain about the ownership or have other related questions, you may wish to request that the Copyright Office conduct a search of its records for a fee of $75 per hour. Additional information can be found in Circular 22.

 

Could I be sued for using somebody else's work?

 

How about quotes or samples? If you use a copyrighted work without authorization, the owner may be entitled to bring an infringement action against you. There are circumstances under the fair use doctrine where a quote or a sample may be used without permission. However, in cases of doubt, the Copyright Office recommends that permission be obtained.

 

hmm, found this... this good info to know... on us copyright website too...

 

What is a work made for hire?

 

Although the general rule is that the person who creates the work is its author, there is an exception to that principle; the exception is a work made for hire, which is a work prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment; or a work specially ordered or commissioned in certain specified circumstances. When a work qualifies as a work made for hire, the employer or commissioning party is considered to be the author. See Circular 9.

 

as am reading throught copyright law... am finding some interest stuff...

 

hmm, seem you can copyright something under a fictitious/stage/pen name too... kewl... you just check the "Pseudonymous" box on the form... well isn't that thoughtful of them...

 

...well wouldn't ya know it... sonny bonno left a legal legacy... the beat goes on and on i guess...

 

How long does copyright last?

 

The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, signed into law on October 27, 1998, amends the provisions concerning duration of copyright protection. Effective immediately, the terms of copyright are generally extended for an additional 20 years. Specific provisions are as follows:

 

* For works created after January 1, 1978, copyright protection will endure for the life of the author plus an additional 70 years. In the case of a joint work, the term lasts for 70 years after the last surviving author’s death. For anonymous and pseudonymous works and works made for hire, the term will be 95 years from the year of first publication or 120 years from the year of creation, whichever expires first;

 

* For works created but not published or registered before January 1, 1978, the term endures for life of the author plus 70 years, but in no case will expire earlier than December 31, 2002. If the work is published before December 31, 2002, the term will not expire before December 31, 2047;

 

* For pre-1978 works still in their original or renewal term of copyright, the total term is extended to 95 years from the date that copyright was originally secured. For further information see Circular 15a.

 

...oh for the love the god... even this:

 

How do I protect my sighting of Elvis?

 

Copyright law does not protect sightings. However, copyright law will protect your photo (or other depiction) of your sighting of Elvis. Just send it to us with a form VA application and the $30 filing fee. No one can lawfully use your photo of your sighting, although someone else may file his own photo of his sighting. Copyright law protects the original photograph, not the subject of the photograph.

 

... hope that helps some... maybe a little too much info huh?

 

revery

 

the dreamlost

 

"i got you babe" (sonny and cher)

 

the dream continues...

Edited April 29, 2004 by Alaeha