Problem is here, "fair use" is a bag of snakes--does fair use include
publishing a one-line letter? After a few hours of digging into legalese and
opinion about fair use, it came to me that this is all a gray area. If I
have
doubts, I ask, if there's someone around to ask. As I understand it,
newspaper
articles have all been published, so that any such copyright for 19th
century
newspapers that once existed is now expired, yet if you look at online scans
of
papers like the NY Times, they all want to disclaim use.

Tom Tenney believes that "fair use" quoting from a book is about 300 words
or less, which I have adopted as a practice. MTP doesn't want you to publish
an
 entire letter, but when I asked about one-liners and the like (the vast
majority  of Sam's letters seem to be a paragraph or two or less) they
couldn't
give me a  definitive answer. "Build it and they will come" becoming
"Publish it
and they  will holler (or sue)" becomes the operative. Does the fair use
serve a larger  good? Does it in any way damage anyone? Google up fair use
and it
becomes the  Tar Baby.

DHF