Cease-and-deshit another bogus C&D
A blogger was sent a cease-and-desist letter for quoting the following passage from Princeton Professor Harry Frankfurt's new book, Bullshit:
One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern, or attracted much sustained inquiry. In consequence, we have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves. And we lack a conscientiously developed appreciation of what it means to us. In other words, we have no theory. I propose to begin the development of a theoretical understanding of bullshit, mainly by providing some tentative and exploratory philosophical analysis...
I guess Prof. Frankfurt needs to learn a lesson that such a move will only exacerbate his "problem". In fact, I wonder if, as seems to be the case with the recently-leaked Dr. Who episode, this isn't a way of getting attention for his book. Prof. Frankfurt should know that commenting and criticism is in 17 USC 107 under the statutory defense of fair use for copyright infringement.
It's not a particularly interesting passage, by the way... and if this is the "heart of the work"*, the rest of the book is probably... well, bullshit.
UPDATE [2005-03-16 15:26:51]: As Doug points out, much of the text of On Bullshit was available here and you can use the Internet Archive's wayback machine to see various versions of this text here.
UPDATE [2005-03-16 15:47:23]: Turns out the professor doesn't mind.
* Harper and Row v. Nation Enterprises, 471 U.S. 539 (1985) found no fair use defense where the amount taken was small but was the "heart" of the work at question.