On International Copyright Law and Intellectual Property

By now our devoted readers are probably wondering where all those pictures are that we promised when we first fired up this blog. Rest assured that we are working on acquiring some, specifically to illustrate an entry that we hope to generate within a couple of weeks. It might be helpful to you to know, however, why up until now we haven’t posted any images.

The answer is simple: I deal daily with international copyright law and intellectual property issues, so I will not use any image for any purpose, commercial or frivolous, without the express permission of the copyright holder. That means I won’t go grab images off anybody else’s website nor will I scan them out of magazines or newspapers and post them here. If an image appears on this blog, you can bet your boots we have permission to use it, and most likely we will have paid for that privilege. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a photograph provided by the PBR or a breeder, or an original work of art created by one of our many talented artist friends. If it’s here, we have done the homework to use it.

We plan to follow the rules about using content others generate, and we expect others to do likewise for the content they find here. We will not countenance theft from this website. Don’t go lifting anything without permission, because we will find you out and we will not let it go.

Having said all that, we now present our inaugural image, a bucking bull Christmas ornament made for us by our very good friend, the talented artist and children’s book illustrator Jill McElmurry. Jill has written or illustrated such wonderful titles as Mad for Plaid, Where’s Stretch?, and our all-time favorite, I’m Not a Baby. We recommend her books to you wholeheartedly, especially if you have little ones in your household, but we have to admit that we grown-ups occasionally sneak off to enjoy one of them surreptiously, the same way we might slip down to the kitchen in the middle of the night to polish off the last of the lemon risotto. Hope you enjoy seeing this creation as much as we enjoyed unwrapping it.