Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Atheists, Pets, and the Copyright Law

I received an email from Focus on the Family last week. The subject line read, "Do Pets Go To Heaven?" Nothing like a good title to get you to read an email. This one did not fail to deliver.

There were several scripture verses and Biblical references to support animals being in heaven. But the real pay off was the information about an atheist group who sells insurance policies to Christians promising to care for their pets when their people are taken away in the Rapture. Now, I'm a Christian and I don't know exactly what the end times hold, but I am doing my best to be ready to participate. And I found this story hysterical. I laughed out loud.

I thought my elderly church people would enjoy reading this article. Focus on the Family allows one copy of the article to be printed for personal use. I could have made one copy and passed it around one by one. But I wanted to put it in my weekly church newsletter.

Unlike a certain editor in recent Internet news, I try not to break copyright law and teach others to do likewise. So, I filled out a form asking for permission to reprint the article in my church newsletter. In two days I got an answer. They gave me a one time permission to print 40 copies of the article (the number of newsletters I print each Sunday). They specifically told me not to share it via the Internet, and not only the Internet but also "all other forms of electronic media now or hereafter known to man." I
thought that was funny too.

I can't repost it here for you but I can provide a link to the original article if you'd care to read it. I enjoyed it and I hope you will too.

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