Apparently, in an effort to save the waning industry, print media have recently gotten rather aggressive about enforcing their copyright against people who repost their articles online. Consequently, logging it another site I once frequented now loads this message:

It then states that though the site has no legal responsibility for its members, because it's "an easier target" for suits than a poster, and to maintain good relations with the rest of sports media, the site will delete any articles re-posted in their entirety.

Emphases above are mine. It might be a bit more difficult for non-British print media to come after RAFO for copyright infringement, or legally compel Ben to surrender the members actual name so they can be targeted directly, but I expect this to be an increasing issue in the next few years. Print media already deeply resent the way the internet has cut into paying subscriptions and thus advertisement that keeps them alive, particularly since those were already declining before the internet became mainstream. On top of that, they've been hearing for a while how the internet has made them irrelevant and redundant; how would you expect a print journalist (or their publisher) to react when they were paid to write posted online for free? Expecting inclusion of their byline to completely mollify them may be expecting too much, but it seems like that should be done at a minimum (even though it frequently isn't around here.... ) On the other hand, if a suit WAS filed, including the copyright notice in the post could represent an admission of guilt; you'd have to ask a lawyer. Probably the safest thing to do is what most people now do at the site I referenced: Post the articles title and first paragraph, paraphrase a summary with an additional paragraph, then include a link to the full article for anyone who wants to read and discuss the whole thing. If nothing else that prevents copyright violation and insures the business that generated the content is duly acknowledged as such.

As to the ice cream truck, a quarter mile isn't very far at all; 440 yards, 1320 feet or (depending on where you live) as little as 2 city blocks. If the music can be drowned out by central air conditioning it's either not loud music or a VERY loud air conditioner. This seems like another case of "you can't do anything I dislike in public, because public space is my personal property". The paradoxical nature of that should be obvious to everyone, but the Western cult of the individual has grown to such a stature in recent years that a lot of people are seemingly incapable of putting themselves in the other persons shoes. As a result, in many places your neighbors majority vote can declare the decor of once sacrosanct personal property like your house or vehicle illegal. It should be fairly obvious that an ice cream truck intends its music to carry; that's rather the point. Therefore it seems to me the real issue is not the volume of the music but the presence of the ice cream truck, the same kind of mindset that gave us gated communities. I'd prefer whole American TOWNS not turn into a place like that, with the police department serving as security guards at the entrance. If he's crashing private events or driving through to sell ice cream at 2AM in the middle of the week, that's more of a public nuisance, but simply driving an ice cream truck through the neighborhood in the middle of the day is, as he notes, a time honored tradition, and not just in America; I walked right by an ice cream truck parked on a corner just a couple days ago.