Does anyone know the relationship between:
- The Beer Connoisseur, © 2009 HERE'S TO BEER, INC. and
- The Beer Connoisseur™ On Tap Publishing, LLC?
Look, I am up for any good trademark versus copyright hissy handbags brawl as the next guy... but wouldn't you think someone might have checked against the name as part of the set up? Especially if you are going to charge admission and then suggest that you get to control all context, as in:
...you automatically grant (or warrant that the owner of such rights has expressly granted) to... a royalty-free, non-exclusive, perpetual and irrevocable worldwide right and license to use, reproduce, modify, publish and distribute such materials or incorporate such materials into any form or technology now known or later developed, and you waive any moral rights you may have in having the material altered or changed in a manner not agreeable to you.
Have beer blog data and forum posts become such hot commodities that gathering content in this sort of manner will lead to anything? The moral rights clause is interesting. "Moral rights?" you say. "What are those?" As those clever folks at wikipedia note "moral rights include the right of attribution, the right to have a work published anonymously or pseudonymously, and the right to the integrity of the work." So if you waive attribution, it means your words might be presented as someone else's. If that were to occur, well, who would know who was the real clever person?
It's a jungle out there, kids, I tell ya. Even in Web 2.0. Do we need two connoisseurs? Or even one for that matter? I wonder if there are any hidden meanings in the inter-linguistic borrowing, as there is with aficionado with its contextual awareness of the abiding tragedy inherent in the object of desire. Maybe the sound "connoisseur" has a rude meaning in another language. I've never been able to hear someone call the publican "guv'nor" in a British 1940s movie since I worked in Poland.
The real question might be this: how many on-line beer forums do you really need? One of the BC's might be the best of all but the other real question, if you turn it around, might be what would your one favorite beer forum look like?
Comments
Knut Albert - June 30, 2009 4:45 am
I won't - at least not for now - give any of these sites my details just to have a peek at the contents. There is a beer information overload right now, there is even more quality beer writing than I can handle. I think both connoisseurs are about two years too late.
My favourite beer forum has to be truly international, run from the bottom up and dominated by informed and friendly people. I don't mind them being slightly intoxicated at times. I'm all right with ratebeer and the Norwegian Friends of Nøgne ø forum.
Barry (Adeptus) - June 30, 2009 4:57 am
Well, at least they helpfully point out the dangers of posting on an forum. If I'd known that before, I'd never have signed up to any of them! :P
5. You understand that the comments of others displayed in connection with your Submitted Content as used herein ("Third Party Comments"), may be disparaging, defamatory, embarrassing, or otherwise be of an unfavorable nature and may expose you to public ridicule, humiliation or condemnation.
Barry (Adeptus) - June 30, 2009 4:58 am
I hope I'm not ridiculed for mistyping "an forum" instead of "a forum" ;)
Alan - June 30, 2009 8:21 am
Only if you want to be ridiculed. After my whole Duval / Duvel thing I am smarting myself.
Knut makes a good point about beer information overload. There seems to be a lot of trying to get a piece of a pie and creating a niche around it rather than responding to demand. I got a link to something about craft beer and outdoor life yesterday and another about beer and travel. Don't get me started on the fine diner's usurpation of good beer through pairing.
Who really wakes up and says "Today, I am going to have a damn good food pairing" anyway? What next? The necessary lighting for beer? I read something about holding a tasting (which I think is a pairing without the food) and it warned against having flowers about the house for frig's sake.
Barry (Adeptus) - June 30, 2009 4:40 pm
I'm half tempted to sign up for a year, just to see what the printed version is like. However, I don't like that there's pretty much zero open access content on their website. I see they've opened the forum up, but it's horrible in terms of the interface.
And why would I even consider signing up? As Knut says, there's a beer information overload -- and I'd like to think contributing to it in my own little way -- but sometimes it'd be nice to sit out back with a beer or a cigar and flick through a dead tree covered in beer porn. I've plenty of beer (mostly brewing) books, but are there any real quality beer publications out there that have decent content that you can't find on the web? One that doesn't describe itself as "the vangaurd [sic] magazine for the elite epicurean of beer"? I mean, come on!