No one likes to be appropriated or to feel used. Legalities aside, it is common courtesy to ask permission before quoting in any other venue. Copyright laws are intended not only to protect creative, moral, and monetary rights, but also to allow authors to control the venue in which their work appears. Timeliness is important also. Authors, even in an informal setting, should have a decent opportunity to update or to otherwise re-think their remarks. Even without the formality of footnotes, sources for quotes can be attributed. This gives fair credit to the source(s) and provides the reader who (and plenty outside of academia do! ) wishes to have greater context and more depth the opportunity to be able go to the original source. Legalities aside, if an author quotes extensively without permission, it just plain looks bad. If nothing else, it looks lazy. I don't see why just because the written word is in electronic form, such matters become more lenient with regard to giving credit where it is due AND asking permission. If the informality of the venue is the excuse for being lax with attribution, that is actually ~more unfair. Here's why. If an author writes something informal or spontaneous to make a casual observation or to raise a point for discussion on a list such as this and the posting then becomes "up for grabs" in the realm of garden literature, that surely will become ~very inhibiting for discussion. I know that I would become much more guarded in what I wrote if I thought that it could suddenly turn up in a book! Bummer! Cheers anyway, Louise