Would you pay $500 dollars for a bottle of wine?

Question 1 -- Yes, most assuredly.

Question 2 -- after an hour of thought after realizing there were two questions -- Yes, most assuredly.

Regards, Bob

So, for you it is a little of both.

If I may ask...howcome?

Having once in my brief existence been an educator who dabbled in the creation of a few "bulk packs" of photocopied copyrighted crap to trouble young minds under my tutelage (not to mention the uploading of said copyrighted crap onto our class website and the propagation of additional copyrighted crap by countless overlong e-mails), I can say that the copyright exceptions were to be applied only within the limited context of the class and our university. A public forum is a completely different game.

Actually, Manuel, it's not. It's the same game. It's illegal to do it here. It was illegal to do it there. Nobody minded. Nobody said anything. But you (and your colleagues) were in fact breaking copyright law. It's just that it's a little more chancy in this post-Napster era, when the music industry sees fit to sue grandmothers for letting their kids download pirated music ...

I think you have pegged it quite succinctly, Robin. When I was teaching high school and college, I understood that what I (and all the other teachers) was doing was technically illegal, but that I wasn't likely to get called on it, and if I was I could probably get away with because nobody much cared to pursue it.

So in short: I knew (as Tim should know, but apparently doesn't) that I was doing something illegal, but I figured there was little chance I'd get chastised for it.

Oh, shit, so that's what they meant by "don't worry, you'll be allright..."! Luckily, I don't do that work anymore.

Hoke,

Once again for clarity: We teachers [in California] are allowed, by law, to use copyrighted material for educational purposes.

Posting an article on a thread about the excessive price of premium wine is, in fact, an educational purpose.

I will make no money from it nor will I realize any personal gain.

In spite of that, I will honor Robin's request and post no more such articles from a website. But I have to wonder why there is an image posting capability on this BBS if copyright is such an issue.


Not that it matters.

Tim, I don't want to beat a dead horse, but please look at the University of California policy on reproduction of copyrighted material: the Wisconsin and New York approaches are very similar:

http://www.ucop.edu/ucophome/coordrev/p ... 29-86.html

Your summary really can't stand up against the UC policy statement.

Regards, Bob

It seems this thread is no longer about wine?

Joe, Tim and I have agreed I can think about my answer to his question about wine -- OFs wine lovers need a bit of time, you know.

But lawyers can BS without thinking too much.

My problem is that I'm both!

Stay tuned -- wine will appear again soon. :-)

Regards, Bob

Last night I had half of a bottle of 2004 Clos Roche Blanche "Pif". A brilliant wine, of a purity and gracefulness that make me, simply, happy. Gorgeous red fruit, plus vibrant minerality.

$9.99 at Chambers. For $500 I could get a hell of a lot of this.

It seems this thread is no longer about wine?

It never was about wine, Joe.

Hoke,

Once again for clarity: We teachers [in California] are allowed, by law, to use copyrighted material for educational purposes.

Posting an article on a thread about the excessive price of premium wine is, in fact, an educational purpose.

I will make no money from it nor will I realize any personal gain.

In spite of that, I will honor Robin's request and post no more such articles from a website. But I have to wonder why there is an image posting capability on this BBS if copyright is such an issue.


Not that it matters.

Tim: Don't be insulting, please. Repeating a mantra is not "clarity". I understood what you said the first time. I, who had cause to know the rules and laws as an educator, and others who are knowledgeable and informed in the area, to wit, a journalist and a lawyer, have a different interpretation and understanding of the issue and we said so.

Putting your fingers in your ears and parroting a response in a condescending manner does not constitute a discussion. For a teacher, I have to say, you show a distressing tendency towards close-mindedness, and more than a little of the authoritarian "I know everything, you dummy" attitude.

Tim, I don't want to beat a dead horse, but please look at the University of California policy on reproduction of copyrighted material: the Wisconsin and New York approaches are very similar:

http://www.ucop.edu/ucophome/coordrev/p ... 29-86.html

Your summary really can't stand up against the UC policy statement.

Regards, Bob

Thanks for the website, Bob.

This will be most helpful for us in the education biz


Here's my take on it:

This is the provision we educators refer to in a validation of the use of copyrighted materials:

III. PERMISSIBLE PHOTOCOPYING OF COPYRIGHTED WORKS

"Teachers may reproduce copyrighted works for classroom use and for research without securing permission and without paying royalties when the circumstances amount to what the law calls 'fair use.'"

Additionally:

A single copy is allowable if it is a spontaneous situation [wherein it would be unreasonable to expect any authorship contact can be made prior to it's timely use] and for the intended educational use by the person making the copy.

Further:

The "fair use" doctrine is intended to keep people from making copies in place of making a purchase. I had bought the newspaper which contained this article.

Lastly:

The website in question allows the e-mailing and/or downloading of their articles and, in effect, would certainly consider that a fair use of their product.

If not, every person who has ever clipped out a picture, a comic, an article or even a store coupon is liable and could be sued for copyright infringement.

Clearly, this is not the case.


My two cents...

Hoke,

Once again for clarity: We teachers [in California] are allowed, by law, to use copyrighted material for educational purposes.

Posting an article on a thread about the excessive price of premium wine is, in fact, an educational purpose.

I will make no money from it nor will I realize any personal gain.

In spite of that, I will honor Robin's request and post no more such articles from a website. But I have to wonder why there is an image posting capability on this BBS if copyright is such an issue.


Not that it matters.

Tim: Don't be insulting, please. Repeating a mantra is not "clarity". I understood what you said the first time. I, who had cause to know the rules and laws as an educator, and others who are knowledgeable and informed in the area, to wit, a journalist and a lawyer, have a different interpretation and understanding of the issue and we said so.

Putting your fingers in your ears and parroting a response in a condescending manner does not constitute a discussion. For a teacher, I have to say, you show a distressing tendency towards close-mindedness, and more than a little of the authoritarian "I know everything, you dummy" attitude.

Hoke,

That was not my intention.

If I have offended, I apologize...but this is the second time you have read something I wrote and took it as an affront or a put-down of some sort.

I have a confident voice in my writing, this is true, but it is simply that. My writing style may not be to your liking, I won't speculate, but I am not being authoritarian either.

Please know I do not try to insult or put people down. If you percieved my words as such, I would have to conclude that maybe the problem lies elsewhere and not with what I wrote.

It seems this thread is no longer about wine?

We just took a momentary side trip....'tis the nature of posting on a public BBS, I'm afraid.

Funniest bit in an otherwise rather dreary thread that seems to have turned into a legal treatise on intellectual property law:

Yeah, and I'm still bitter that my mother threw out my Bill Spohn rookie card

Most naive post in the thread:

My response would be: Then are we resigned to the unchallenged propensity of the wineries to raise prices, at will, and without concern for the consumer who, I boldly add, made them the success they are today?
All these wineries had humble or rough-start beginnings....and now they turn their backs on us consumers who supported them when they weren't selling wine at $125 bucks a crack?

I strenuously object to that.

Go on - challenge them - don't buy their overpriced juice. That's how the rest of us deal with the phenomenon of rising prices.

But stamping your little feet and crying that it just isn't fair and where is their loyalty to the consumer is frankly laughable.

Wineries are first and foremost a business, and have one goal - make money. They will price their product at whetever the traffic will bear and they would be silly to accept one cent less.

A friend of mine runs a BC winery and has priced his reserve blend of cab at the very top level for local product. He takes the (non-Keynsian) economist's view that if he sells every bottle at that new and higher price, it was either priced just right or perhaps not high enough. If he fails to sell out, he had better think about lowering his prices. Nothing hard to understand there.

If I were to wail at him that I had bought his wine for years when it was unknown and he OWES it to me to sell his current product to me at some sort of gratitude discount, he would rightly laugh at me and wonder if I didn't have a screw loose. As I am wondering about the originator of the thoughts above.

Hm.

Naive? I don't think so.

The point I am making is in objection to the hue and cry from those in this biz who insist upon raising the banner of "what the market will bear" is, in my humble opinion, just another way of justifying excessiveness. It has succeedeed in only one thing: making money.

That's fine if one only cares about that. I, however, believe that winemaking is an art and needs to be respected not overpriced. Some may see wine as a cash cow of some sort. I see wine as something more than just a money maker.

I fail to understand the bit about somebody owes me, but I will leave that for others to ponder. My motivation is to discuss this issue. The article on the website [from which this thread sprang] prompted me to post this. I am mearly echoing it's sentiment, not the originator of it.


Wine, at it's humble roots, was meant for the masses not just for the elite. I just think wineries who charge such high prices have lost sight of that fact. Perhaps you might think the San Francisco Chronicle writer is naive or "stamping [her] little feet and crying" as well...?

The source:http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/08/03/WIGVHK6MGT1.DTL

I believe the author also has an e-mail address.


FWIW.

Wine, at it's humble roots, was meant for the masses not just for the elite. I just think wineries who charge such high prices have lost sight of that fact.

Well, actually, Tim, you're pretty much erroneous there too.

Wine, from it's beginning, as best we can tell, was NOT meant for the masses. It was the beverage of choice of the religious/noble/wealthy elite who could afford it. Beer was the fermented beverage of the masses (and beer such that it had to be consumed through what amounted to a drinking straw with a sieve built in to filter out the sediment).

Roman times? Same, really, if you're talking about "good wine". The wine for the slaves, the poor, and the soldiers, was wine mixed (adulterated, thinned out) with all number of things, but most commonly salt water (yeah, salt water). So what the masses were drinking usually wasn't what we think of wine (and in truth what we think nowadays of wine is not at all what the ancients were drinking, even the highest class and most wealthy, but that's another story).

Nope, sorry, wine was perceived as a luxury beverage for a few thousand years, and didn't really become a commonly cosumed wine of the masses until the "Middle Ages" of Europe. Even in wine-consuming Britain, wine was perceived as, and consumed by, largely the noble classes and wealthy merchants. Even when wine did become widely available, the masses you speak of generally preferred the distilled beverages---cheaper, and you got the buzz on faster, dontcha know! Just the thing if you're living in Cheapside.

Nowadays, of course, what with the rise of the heretofore minimal or unknown "middle class", wine is available to most, and affordably by most (if, that is, they don't want Screaming Birds of Prey), so it's a different game. You can afford what in other ages the humble masses would have been amazed to have available: drinkable wine, instead of rancid swill. Instead of pulling a Miniver Cheevy, you should be celebrating that you live in the best possible time for being a wine consumer.

But history simply does not support your own personal thesis of the vinous proletariat, yearning to break the chains over their moderately priced Chateau d'Yquem.

Not that that matters, of course.

It seems this thread is no longer about wine?

It never was about wine, Joe.

All I wanted was a list of people who are willing to pay $500 for a bottle of wine (that way I'll know whose house to invite myself over to).

Instead what I got was Manuel putting a hit out on me, this strange Ping-Pong battle of wills over copyright in the classroom, and now you're telling me that this was never about wine?

I'm so confused...



FWIW, I have had a $500 bottle of wine that was 10x better than a $50 bottle of wine. Of course, I can't tell you which $500 wine it was because then it'll go up to $600 and I'd like to keep it my little secret.

Of course, I can't tell you which $500 wine it was

It must have been this <-- wine here. It has your MO all over it.

Instead what I got was Manuel putting a hit out on me, this strange Ping-Pong battle of wills over copyright in the classroom, and now you're telling me that this was never about wine?

I'm so confused...



FWIW, I have had a $500 bottle of wine that was 10x better than a $50 bottle of wine. Of course, I can't tell you which $500 wine it was because then it'll go up to $600 and I'd like to keep it my little secret.

"Put a hit" on you, Joey? I swear, the youth of today are so whiny... When I order a hit on you, you shall know it beyond the shadow of a doubt. What I requested here was for someone to slap you upside the head, just to see if it was possible to knock some much-needed sense into it. I was only showing that I care, and here I am, accused...

Where's the TN for that $500 bottle? Don't tell me... Pingus, right?

Where's the TN for that $500 bottle? Don't tell me... Pingus, right?

I told you, it's my personal, secret, $500 bottle of wine...

Of course, I can't tell you which $500 wine it was

It must have been this <-- wine here. It has your MO all over it.

That's not it.

You've never heard of it... it's unrated/unreviewed.

I'm buying as many cases as I can while it's still cheap.

Hoke,

Wine was often used by the common people because the water was generally unfit to drink.

There are references to wine in history from the Bible clear up to Shakespeare's day which would support this.

Sometimes I do get it right

OK...back to the topic.

I wonder aloud: What wines would be worth big giant bucks and what would be the criteria to justify such a purchase/price?

Sometimes you get it right, that's true. And sometimes you get it half-right.

Wine was often used by the common people because the water was generally unfit to drink.

When they had it available, that's true. But if you go back and re-read what I wrote, I indicated it usually wasn't available, except in an adulterated, debased form for the masses. True, the wine still had benefit, even with being diluted in the water, because it did have antiseptic properties, but the vision of those common people having fine wines ready to drink (as in the merchants keeping the prices low because they were more interested in keeping their regular customers happy than making a profit) is just...silly.

The best wines were always reserved for the nobility, the priests, and the wealthy merchant classes. The commoners got the vinegar and the swill diluted with salt water (Google "posca" and see what you come up with). One of the reasons those nobles and priests and wealthy folks lived longer and generally healthier lives---because they were the ones drinking the wines.

Look, stop relying on Biblical and Shakespearean references, Tim, and do a little research. Some archeological, anthropological, and sociological studies. Some historical studies of the economics and trade patterns of different societies. A lot of this stuff is in the historical records, and you can find it if you want.

I am not arguing that wine wasn't part and parcel of many societies, and with the improvement of trade and commerce over the ages, along with technological advances, even more so (thank goodness). But an idyllic view of the common masses sitting around with easy access to fine wines is ridiculous. Most of those common masses drank beer (and probably pretty bad beer by our reckoning). Wine was rare to them, expensive, a luxury item.

You can also find lots of references to eating meat in the Bible and Shakespeare. And if that's what you rely on for your only source of information, you'll probably never realize that the common folks in most ancient societies, indeed, up to the fairly recent times, ate very little meat on a regular basis. It was too costly, and largely prohibitive. So they ate pulse and porridge and such.