Grayson County Shopper

County by county news for Friday

Kennesaw gives developers more options

The Kennesaw City Council approved an ordinance amendment Tuesday that officials say will make it easier for developers to build.

The new city law waives a requirement for developers to obtain bonds as surety that they will build roads, gutters and other infrastructure. Instead, they can get a letter of credit confirming they’ll have money for the improvements, said Earnie Via, the city’s public works director.

Via said the recession has made it difficult for developers to obtain bonding but banks are extending lines of credit to those with good finances. Ty Tagami

New super to be sworn in Monday

Cobb school board members will meet at 8 a.m. Monday at the district’s headquarters, 514 Glover Street in Marietta to swear in Superintendent Michael Hinojosa. Hinojosa’s contract officially started July 1, but the new leader is moving from Dallas, where he just wrapped up a six-year run as superintendent. The board agreed to give Hinojosa 10 one-time vacation days for use during his first month on the job. Hinojosa wanted to start in August. Jaime Sarrio

Rodeo at Jim Miller Park this weekend

Saddle up for two days of rodeo fun Saturday and Sunday at the Down N Dirty Rodeo at Jim Miller Park.

The weekend will feature champion bullriders, and competitions including team roping, bareback riding, calf roping and steer wrestling. The rodeo will also include a health fair to educate and screen men for prostate cancer.

The rodeo begins at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday and 2:30 p.m. on Sunday at the park, 2245 Callaway Road in Marietta. Information: 404-931-1042

Janel Davis

Smyrna seeks input for economic study

Smyrna City government is encouraging residents to take an online survey on economic development from the Georgia Competitiveness Initiative and Cobb’s Competitive EDGE.

The Georgia Competitiveness Initiative will develop an economic development strategy using the study to assess strengths and weaknesses.

Smyrna residents and business owners have just a few more days to take the survey online, which is due by Monday and can be found at www.georgiacompetitiveness.org. Rich McCay

Powder Springs picks new police chief

Morrow’s former police chief was chosen unanimously Thursday by Powder Springs City Council as police chief.

William Sewell, current police chief of McMinnville, Tennessee, replaces L. Rick Richardson who was accused of selling surplus police vehicles in 2007 on his own instead of through public auction as required by the City Council.

No Lawyers: Stephens Media LLC, RightHaven LLC, and Bloggers ...

The newspapers owned by Stephens Media LLC are listed below by state. As the Wired article notes, many of these papers will be using the “services” of RightHaven LLC. As for me, I plan to never link to any of these papers. The only paper they own in North Carolina just happens to be the newspaper from the town where I was born. The only regret that I have is that I will be missing out on some of the columns by Vin Suprynowicz. Oh, well,

Arkansas

* Booneville Democrat – Booneville, AR

Awesome business model. Bloggers who might otherwise have excerpted a bit from these obscure papers, meaning people will quite often click the link over to the paper's website and read the whole story, maybe stick around and read some more, driving up traffic, will now ignore these papers. Especially local bloggers, who will look elsewhere. Awesome, what with newspaper circulation taking a nose dive.

I can see media outlets suing when most, or the whole article, is excerpted. I learned how much to excerpt from watching what John did, Harvey at Bad Example, and a few others early on. Lord knows, sometime I want to excerpt a whole lot more, but, one just doesn't do that. Take a small portion, make your comments, and, if necessary, send them over to the original source for the rest. Someone worked hard to write the story (even if half of what comes from the big MSM players is more wishful thinking), they should get their hits.

If you follow the original link, there is a story there about it happening. It did not happen to Melissa (I think), but it has happened many times (according to the lawyer filing the suits, “Hundreds of lawsuits…are already in the works….”). Maybe the best quote from the lawyer is:

“We perceive there to be millions, if not billions, of infringements out there.”

And to top it off, that is their business model. This may be a shining example of why we need something like a “loser pays” system for torts. I know you probably do not agree with that, but hundreds to thousands of cases like this is why the court system is so clogged up now.

Just my $0.02, and worth maybe half that.

I'm only a little bit surprised that in your haste to make another of your clever snarky comments, you failed to note the error in what she said.

Linking to copyrighted material isn't the problem – it's quoting from it without permission that is. Linking to the material actually does the copyright holder the favour of driving up traffic at their site and it doesn't entail using even one word of their copyrighted material.

The Working press of the nation

International Periodicals Directory

Ulrich's international periodicals directory

Gale directory of publications

Editor & Publisher International Yearbook, Weeklies, 2003