"Roundheads and Ramblings"

legal matters

If You Want to Avoid Jail, You Need to Check the City Codes, Too.

Posted on Wednesday, April 01, 2015 7:35 PM

As for silly laws that apply to just one city in South Carolina, Myrtle Beach wins the prize for the longest list. And I guarantee you these are not April Fool jokes. They are still on the books.

Myrtle Beach

It is illegal to urinate in the waters of any park.

Persons may not change clothes in a gas station without permission of the owner.
Sleeping on public beach after 9:00 p.m. prohibited. It shall be unlawful for any person to sleep on the beach within the city between the hours of 9:00 p.m. and sunrise.

Dogs:
(a) It shall be unlawful to allow any dog to be on the public beaches or boardwalks of the municipality from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. during the period from May 15 through September 15 of each year, except for assistance animals and law enforcement dogs. Owners shall be subject to arrest and the dogs may be impounded.
(b) It shall be unlawful for an owner or keeper of any animal to take or permit the animal onto the right of way of Ocean Boulevard between 21st Ave. North and 13th Ave. South during the period from March 1st to September 30th of each year, except for the purpose of direct and expeditious crossing of the right of way. Owners shall be subject to arrest and the animal may be impounded.

Charleston

The Fire Department may blow up your house. Readers of "Damned Yankee" will understand the need for this law.
It is against the law to drive a motorized vehicle on King Street.

Clemson

Lifeguards must be present at apartment complex pools, but only after 11:00 PM. -

Fountain Inn

Horses are to wear pants at all times.

Greenville

The drinking age on Furman University campus is 60 years old. I'm guessing they have a lot of old faculty members there.

Lancaster County

It is illegal to dance in public in Lancaster

Eating watermelons in the Magnolia Street cemetery is forbidden.

You Can Lead a Horse to Water, but You Can't Make Him Take a Bath

Posted on Tuesday, March 31, 2015 5:17 PM

I've been deeply engaged in research about 19th-century marriage customs all day today, and my head is swimming. So instead of offering you something pithy and meaningful, or coming up with an elaborate hoax for April Fool's Day, how about settling for a few more weird laws from the State of South Carolina.

Horses may not be kept in bathtubs.
It is illegal to sell any alcoholic beverages on Sunday, unless you own a private club.
A permit must be obtained to fire a missile.
It is illegal to give or receive oral sex in South Carolina.
When approaching a four way or blind intersection in a non-horse driven vehicle you must stop 100 ft from the intersection and discharge a firearm into the air to warn horse traffic.
It is perfectly legal to beat your wife on the court house steps on Sundays.
Every adult male must bring a rifle to church on Sunday in order to ward off Indian attacks.
It is a capital offense to inadvertently kill someone while attempting suicide.
A person must be eighteen years old to play a pinball machine.

Source: http://www.weirdfacts.com/weird-state-laws/59-weird-south-carolina.html#ixzz3W0FJLHtM

image source: permalink.

Copyright and the Library of Congress

Posted on Tuesday, February 26, 2013 12:26 PM

Now, a brief word on copyright. The law does not require authors to pay for (or even register) their copyrights. Full copyright protection comes automatically when you write anything. So don’t let anyone charge you for that copyright. Just make sure your manuscript has that all-important symbol: Copyright ©Your Name and Year of Publication. It goes on the second page, the reverse of your title. That’s it. That’s all you really have to do.

It is possible, however, to register your copyright with the Library of Congress, if you so desire. Having the copyright registered provides an additional degree of protection if your book should ever end up in a court of law. For example, if someone plagiarizes your work and passes it off as his own, it may help to be able to point to the date on which you registered the copyright. You’ll have to decide for yourself if the registration fees are worth it.

I didn’t think it was, until my book started to gain national attention and the ﬁrst screen writer came snifﬁng around my copyright set-up. Then I learned that $35.00 was a cheap safeguard, particularly when I compared it to what a successful screen version of the book might earn. It is now possible to ﬁle your registration online and then mail in a copy of the book to complete the process. I say, do it.

You will deﬁnitely want to obtain a Library of Congress cataloging number, which guarantees that your book will be included in the Library of Congress catalog for all time. Librarians also want to see an LCCN so they know how to enter the book into their own cataloguing system. The publisher must send the ﬁrst copy of the completed book to the Library of Congress, where someone will record all the necessary data describing the book and create an original catalog entry. Your production company should take care of that for you, although they may charge you a fee. Then the production company adds the assigned number to all copies of the book.

Portions of the above blog have been taken from my book, "The Second Mouse Gets the Cheese: How to Avoid the Traps of Self-Publishing," available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Apple iBooks, and Smashwords.com.

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legal matters

If You Want to Avoid Jail, You Need to Check the City Codes, Too.

You Can Lead a Horse to Water, but You Can't Make Him Take a Bath

Copyright and the Library of Congress