Best of...bugs
.
lines.
Anyway, on with the show...
Subject: Bugs
Message-ID: <1lpq23...@gap.caltech.edu>
Date: 16 Feb 93 04:20:19 GMT
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
Lines: 282
NNTP-Posting-Host: alumni.caltech.edu
Copyright 1993 David Palmer
A bar story. Between Calahan's and the Chatsubo, where nobody much
cares if you live OR die, between now and then, there are
BUGS
The guy on the stool next to me swore into his beer and looked up.
I didn't follow his eyes, I got caught that way once. No cause he
should hit me, but a guy wearing a suit like that and drinking in a
dive like Sally's, no telling what he might do. *I* was a bit classy
for this place. I watched him grab a rusty dart from the bar and throw
it at the ceiling. "Got her!" he said. He called towards the other
end of the bar--"Bartender!"
The barkeep wandered over. I guess she was Sally--the place looked
like her, and she didn't look like the type anyone would hire, so she
had to own the bar. "Yeah, what do you want?" she asked.
"A fresh beer, without egg in it."
"Nobody put egg in your beer," she said.
"She did," he said, and pointed straight up.
This time I looked. The dart had nailed a huge roach to the
plasterboard ceiling. Dead center.
Sally knocked down the dart with a broom, probably the first time it
had been used in weeks, dropping the roach into the beer with its
eggs. "Right, I guess that's a fresh beer for you, on the house," she
said. She picked up the glass and looked at the roach. "They seem to
be getting bolder every day. When I was a girl, they always ran away
from people. Nowadays they just try to sneak up on you."
Sally poured the beer down the sink, I watched to make sure. The guy
just looked at the ceiling. The bugs were coming back. "She's right,
you know," he said, "these roaches aren't like the old ones."
"A roach is a roach," I said, "they haven't changed in three million
years." I had heard that somewhere. "I saw on TV that they're coming
out more nowadays because of the greenhouse effect, something about too
much carbon monoxide and chlorowhatevers in the air."
"New one on me," he said. "The fact is that roaches have changed,
they've been changed. They sneak around in cracks, laying eggs
everywhere, following you around, listening to everything you do,
telling people all your secrets."
I looked at him. Crazy man. He didn't look dangerous, I just wished
those darts were farther away. Somebody had to tell him, or he'd never
get over it. "You're crazy, roaches don't tell secrets."
Sally gave him a fresh beer. No tip, he wasn't all crazy. Sally left
when she figured that out.
"They do now, ever since a few years ago, around the turn of the
century."
Roaches I don't like talking about, but it was probably better than
talking to Sally. "What happened then?"
"Project Blatta-Blather. The invention of the talking roach."
I've got a thing called a pocket transcriber that writes down
everything I hear, the judge makes me carry it so I can't say the other
guy started it. There's somebody that pays me to put in the 'he said's
and what the guy does when someone tells me a good story. It's not as
much money as hustling darts, but I wasn't going to do that with this
guy.
"I'm a biological engineer with...a company you have certainly heard
of. One day a Colonel from a government agency you have certainly
never heard of came into my office. He told me that he needed a
special type of creature--a creature that could carry a miniature audio
recorder into hostile territory, get close enough to record
conversations without being seen, or at least without causing
suspicion, and then return to friendly territory where the recording
could be read out.
"I put my best engineer on it. I'll call him Joe because that was not
his name. Joe's a genius, but English was his eighth language, he had
only been speaking it for a few months, and he once confided to me that
the maximum number of languages his brain could hold was seven and a
half.
"The result was pure genius. The sort of idea that never occurs when
engineers have well-developed communications skills.
"Joe made a bug that was a bug. A completely biological tape recorder that
could walk, fly, find its own energy sources, reproduce. He changed the
cockroach from a crawling, repulsive, filth-eating marvel of
evolution into a crawling, repulsive, filth-eating marvel of
espionage.
"The idea was simple, like all works of genius. The implementation was
incredibly difficult, as befits a cost-plus contract. Joe created
special cells that fit between the auditory neurons and the wing motor
neurons. The cell connected signals from these neurons to an organelle
unlike anything ever before created."
"Organelle?" I asked. I was totally lost. All I knew was the guy had
made a crawling tape recorder.
"An organelle is just an organ in a cell, like a pancreas or a spleen
would be for you or me. This particular organelle has the ability to
transcribe sounds onto strands of DNA and vice versa."
"DNA?" I asked. It was fun to hear the words roll by. He really
talked like that, and it sounded like he knew what he was saying. I
wanted to see how many of the words my transcriber knew.
"DNA. Deoxyribonucleic acid," he said. (The thing knew how to spell
that word. I knew how to spell DNA.) "It's a long string of molecules,
and the order of molecules in the string contains information that
helps to run the cell. It's like a computer program on tape that
controls all of the cell's machinery."
"Oh yeah," I said, "I remember now." It had to do with computerized
tape recorders that crawled around, I guess.
"Anyway, Joe realized that he could use DNA to store sound, instead of
genetic information. The signals from the auditory neurons go to a DNA
encoder, which creates a string of DNA with the sounds imprinted on
it. When given the proper trigger, in this case a pheromone-induced
hormone, it stops recording and passes the DNA to a decoder, which
reads the DNA and signals the motor neurons to vibrate the wings and
reproduce the original sound."
"Very clever," I said. He sounded like he thought it was clever.
"The Colonel thought so too. It was the perfect way to avoid the
problem of a surveillance target finding a bug. If you stomp on a
cockroach you try to avoid looking at the remains, which was why the
Colonel had originally wanted to implant a conventional recorder into
one. With this, even if you got suspicious and examined the flattened
spyroach carefully, you'd need a powerful microscope and an intimate
familiarity with cockroach neurocytophysiology to figure out that the
bugs were engineered."
"Sounds pretty good," I said. I was catching on, it was a tape
recorder hidden in an cockroach that you wouldn't want to look for and
couldn't find if you did.
"We implanted audiotaxis to make it get approach interesting
conversations, homing instincts to let it return to the spy base for
playback, the usual tricks. It all worked great, until we turned it
over to the Colonel."
"What happened then?"
"The Colonel decided that, rather than just planting the bugs where he
expected something significant to be said, it would be easier and more
productive to spread them everywhere, have them listen to everything,
and later just pick up the ones that happened to be around the former
site of an important conversation. It makes the logistics much
simpler.
"Anyway, he took one of our spyroaches, which had been sterilized to
avoid precisely this sort of thing, and to ensure repeat business, and
had it de-sterilized at a competitor's shop. Not only that, he had
adjustments made. The new modifications allowed it to fly faster,
cling to ceilings better, and produce more eggs. It became a sort of
super-roach, capable of competing in almost any ecological niche.
"When the Colonel released these things, they quickly reproduced and
became a major component of the roach population. Our company started
discovering our spyroaches everywhere, and we were horrified. We tried
to sue--we estimated that there were several billion of these things
running around at one time, and at a thousand dollars apiece that's a
lot of royalties--but it's impossible to sue a government agency that
officially doesn't exist. We didn't have any legal names to put on the
papers or an address for the process server to deliver them to."
I got enough of that to be mad. "You made a super-roach, and now there
are billions of them running around, recording everything we say?" It
was bad enough that I had to carry a transcriber until my probation
runs out, but if you have billions of cockroaches listening to
everything you say, you can't ever get away with anything. I had
roaches at my place, I was going to get some bug poison on the way
home.
"Don't blame us!" he said, "it was all that Colonel's fault. Nothing
that comes out of our lab lasts more than sixty days, nothing lasts
more than a generation. If the Colonel hadn't gone to that other
shop..."
"Yeah, it's always somebody else's fault. I bet you got a cushy raise
and the Colonel got a real talking to and a cushy raise."
"Well, it turned out that the playback trigger was insufficiently
selective to prevent accidental activation. The roach that first
demonstrated this design deficiency was in the same hotel room as a
General and his secretary. He decided that such a widespread invasion
of the American public's privacy was not to be tolerated, and gave us
the task of eliminating the spyroaches that the Colonel had produced.
The Colonel got a transverse promotion to head of security at a
single-person observation post in Antarctica.
"Joe figured out a solution to the roach problem, and I'm here to field
test it. Until we get everything worked out, all secure government
buildings are fumigated every night, and high- level officials use sign
language for all secret conversations. Of course, this whole matter is
classified at the very highest levels."
"That's ridiculous," I said, finally breaking. "If it's so secret, why
are you telling me all this? You're not using sign language."
"I'll tell you in a minute," he said, "but first, listen to this, and
don't say a word until it's over."
He pulled out a small tape recorder and pushed the play button, "Don't
make a sound."
It didn't sound very good, it was no worse than what people listen to
nowadays, but it wouldn't sell any records. It had no words, and the
transcriber didn't write anything down for it. While it was playing,
he went to the door and propped it open.
"Those were the sounds you get by playing back a very special piece of
DNA." He tucked his recorder back into his pocket. "Part of the DNA
makes the cell produce a toxin, a poison lethal only to roaches. A
roach with this DNA, any spyroach that hears the sounds I just played,
is dead." That stopped me, "you can't kill a person just by playing
that tape, can you?" I asked.
"Oh no, it has no effect at all on anything other than spyroaches.
It's perfectly safe."
I usually don't trust people like that who say something's perfectly
safe, not after what happened to Memphis, but I wasn't dead, and he
hadn't worn earplugs or anything like that, so I guessed it wasn't that
dangerous.
"Naturally, it is impractical to go into every roach habitat, like this
one, and play that sound. We plan a media blitz on radio and TV in the
next few days, but that will give us only around 30% coverage.
"The rest of the DNA is to get these sounds to the other 70%. In
mature male roaches, the DNA produces an exogamy instinct. The roaches
find other swarms and try to attract a mate. The sex hormones this
releases trigger the playback mechanism. For mature males, toxin
production is delayed until that happens. In a few weeks, we expect
that every spyroach in the country will have heard those sounds, either
directly, or from some other roach playing back. When that happens,
every spyroach in the country will be dead.
"You see, a spyroach is just this sound's way of making another sound.
It's not the first audio virus--songs and advertising jingles have been
doing it with people, birds and whales for centuries--it's just the
first one with such a high mortality rate among its hosts."
He got down from his stool, "By the way, the reason I'm telling you
this is because it's a secret," he pointed at the ceiling, "and they
love secrets."
I looked up. The ceiling above us was covered with roaches. A few
spread their wings and flitted out the open door.
"There go the first few, to spread their poisonous gospel among their
brethren. It looks like it's working. In a few months there will be
none left. So much for the nouveau roach."
He walked towards the door. "By the way, you may want to leave too,
the toxin is pretty fast acting, and fairly uniform in the time it
requires to take effect." That was the last I saw of him.
I looked back at the roaches. More and more were leaving the ceiling
and flying out the door. Sally was next to me, watching with her mouth
hanging open. I heard a small splosh, and looked down to see a roach
in my beer. "I'm not thirsty anyway," I said, and headed for the
door.
Behind me I heard a hundred small sounds, like popcorn, or like small
hard bodies falling onto the bar, and the floor, and a face.
I'm pretty sure she closed her mouth in time.
--
David M. Palmer pal...@alumni.caltech.edu
pal...@tgrs.gsfc.nasa.gov
d.LiNeAtE
wrote:
>d, I thought we covered this. Refer to the posts with "bits" in the subject
>lines.
>
>Anyway, on with the show...
We covered this? How so? We didn't discuss this. I don't know you.
"Bits" of 300 lines, of over 2000 lines, of over 3000 lines? A
*bit* much.
It seems to me that you're not quoting things you like, you are
reposting major parts of stories, entire stories. What for? Just
refer to them, surely they are on the net somewhere if they were
once posted.
Where did the authors go who wrote these pieces? Who the fuck are
you? We don't even know your name.
Frankly I can't be bothered. Just leave my stuff alone. I don't
know how the rest of you feel about this. Not that you'd use my
stuff, or dare to, because I would report you for abuse and smash
all your teeth in.
Did you ever consider asking if you *could* repost? Because you're
not just quoting a few lines here. You're not even explaining why
you think this stuff is good.
d.
Monkey Doctor
>d, I thought we covered this. Refer to the posts with "bits" in the subject
>lines.
>
>Anyway, on with the show...
I'm siding with d. on this. This story is in the Anthology, and you
really should have asked for permission to post this first. Maybe
David won't object, but as an anthology contributor, I certainly do.
I've withdrawn all the stories on my site that appeared in the book,
to limit their availability in any form other than print.
d. is right - post a link, we cant stop that, post a segment, it does
no harm. But reposting stories wholesale is inconsiderate.
MD
--
I have found some kind of temporary sanity in this...
--
MD Hub page: www.beresfordj.freeserve.co.uk
Follow the #ACC link for stories and the #ACC Character Database
jack
james@no_spam_it_tastes_funny_beresfordj.freeserve.co.uk says...
>
> I'm siding with d. on this. This story is in the Anthology, and you
> really should have asked for permission to post this first. Maybe
> David won't object, but as an anthology contributor, I certainly do.
> I've withdrawn all the stories on my site that appeared in the book,
> to limit their availability in any form other than print.
>
> d. is right - post a link, we cant stop that, post a segment, it does
> no harm. But reposting stories wholesale is inconsiderate.
unfortunately when u publish in a public forum u have voided all of ur
rights to that work, both legally and practically. if i chose to i
could cull my personal favorites from acc and publish them without
giving a dime or an ounce of credit to the original authors..
this is why i don't play here anymore.. inconsiderate is an empty word.
if u can't defend ur position its useless to take it..
--
|alias| murder is a dream
because lack is the center of both.
sicarius
>
>this is why i don't play here anymore.. inconsiderate is an empty word.
>if u can't defend ur position its useless to take it..
under us copyright law the author owns it. no "and if or butt." that
means where ever it is made available... this is what the changes in
copyright law have done for you... the acc work has been published AND
copyrighted... guess what... publishing copyrighted work without
permission can get you in serious trouble these days... especially
with media companies who derive their profits from publishing.
it isn't about 'free use' any more. oh certainly you are better
covered in a closed forum or by having the piece of paper in your
hand... but still reposting without permission of the author is a
no-no.
what do you think would happen if someone [in the states] posted any
or all of the CP cabals works here? do you really believe that the isp
would not disconnect the poster at the author's or his publisher's
request? Most isp these days include in their TOS a clause for
ripping your heart and lungs out for copyright violations.
Myself i don't much care about my works as i won't ever seen a nickle
in my life time for them... but what about those of you who do have
such plans? I do not think it considerate of not asking the author in
advance at least.
in any case i am not surrendering my right to my works unless someone
drops a large wad of bills in front of me and tells me to go buy a new
studio and make more stuff.
sicarius the troubadour
ghost
jack <ja...@XXXgod-eater.org> wrote:
on the other side ... what's the point of reposting anything?
This is a place for new works and new ideas. If I wanted to rehash old
things I'd go through google's archive..
I didn't have a chance to respond to the original request/inquery
regarding this ... here's my response: no it's a stupid idea. I don't
want to read old stories, I don't want to go over things in the past. I
want new things, I want new ideas.
Why repost what you think is the best? Write you're own shit or shut up
and leave.
ghost
jack
sicarius <d...@null.com> wrote in message
news:u7ma9u01d5iml6pkd...@4ax.com...
> On Sun, 17 Mar 2002 23:53:44 GMT, jack <ja...@XXXgod-eater.org> wrote:
>
> >
> >this is why i don't play here anymore.. inconsiderate is an empty word.
> >if u can't defend ur position its useless to take it..
>
>
> under us copyright law the author owns it. no "and if or butt." that
> means where ever it is made available... this is what the changes in
> copyright law have done for you... the acc work has been published AND
> copyrighted...
i disagree with that statement and so does my lawyer. if a thing is
published theres usually a bit of a trail to go along with it.. vital
documents.. contracts, a fucking check. u'v got some proof. its urs, u can
demonstrate this fact.
u can't prove ownership of anything "published" (and that term seems very
out of place in this context) on usenet. u can't even clearly establish
ownership of the work let alone rights to it.. now if u went to the
trouble of copyrighting a thing before u sent it out, either mailing it off
to the feds and getting some papers or sending it through the post office
(we all know this trick right? mail an envelope with the work in ? to
urself, the thing gets stamped and dated by a federal authority.. long as
the thing remains sealed its a bit of proof) then u would have a shot.. but
i doubt many of us bothered..
(note: i'm not really talking about the anth here.. however i think the fact
that it was all published on usenet before it went anywhere else would
significantly muddy the waters if anyone made an issue out of it)
guess what... publishing copyrighted work without
> permission can get you in serious trouble these days...
but *i* wrote these stories man. all of them. i don't know who the hell
these people are.. crazy fuckers to the last man..
my point being that posting a thing on usenet does not constitute
publication in any conventional sense.. nor does it convey the same
privledges as publishing in a print forum. unless u take the time to
establish ur rights before u post ur fucked. i have published in newspapers
and mag's in the past.. every time i signed a contract.. got a check. i
have my proof. here u have no such thing.. do u really think someone is
going to track an ip address from a couple of years ago and link it to a
given account on god only knows what isp and link that to user X, the
obvious author of story Y? get real. u know better.. if u post in an
anonymous public forum u can kiss ur rights goodbye.
especially
> with media companies who derive their profits from publishing.
ok.. i agree.. but people in that situation take thier rights a bit more
seriously and don't simply assume that because they actually wrote a thing
they own it. they establish ownership of the shit in ? before they
distribute. they fill out the forms and mail them in.. they don't post it
in public forums and expect the fact that they tagged a fake name on the
bottom to hold water in court. if u distributed ur music on Napster, and
never bothered to copyright it, would u expect to be able to retain ur
rights?
>
> it isn't about 'free use' any more. oh certainly you are better
> covered in a closed forum or by having the piece of paper in your
> hand... but still reposting without permission of the author is a
> no-no.
its definately a no-no. IMO its just plain wrong.. i wasn't attempting to
condone these sorts of actions.. just to point out the possibility of thier
occuring. i think my actions on this matter speak pretty loudly toward my
own paranoia and my being solidly behind the author/artist/ranting maniac.
in a perfect world u wouldn't have to even consider this sort of thing..
hell, in a very screwed up world u still shouldn't have to. but this is the
real world.. and u do.
>
> what do you think would happen if someone [in the states] posted any
> or all of the CP cabals works here?
nothing. i don't think a damn thing would happen.. i say that because i've
seen it done many many times. try searching the alt hierarchy for "ebook".
i find it unlikely that anyone would notice..
but its a moot point.. basically ur talking about the exact opposite of what
i said. clearly the big CP guys have definite and undisputed ownership of
thier books. they have contracts, checks, and legit copyright doc's
supporting this fact.. that Billy Gibson owns "Nueromancer" is not something
to be disputed. if i post it its clear theft.. no room for argument..
however if u wrote a story, posted it in here.. and i took that story and
claimed it was mine.. u don't have the benefit of thier documentation.
wheres ur proof man!
if i say its *my* story how do u prove i'm lying? ur "publishing" on usenet
won't do u one bit of good in that scenario.. no matter what u say in ur
sig file. the likely outcome would be that the story gets so fucked by
legal issues that no one will touch it, no matter how good it is.
do you really believe that the isp
> would not disconnect the poster at the author's or his publisher's
> request? Most isp these days include in their TOS a clause for
> ripping your heart and lungs out for copyright violations.
yes they would.. but its not a copyright violation if its not copyrighted.
>
> Myself i don't much care about my works as i won't ever seen a nickle
> in my life time for them... but what about those of you who do have
> such plans? I do not think it considerate of not asking the author in
> advance at least.
i completely agree.. just because a thing is possible doesn't mean its
right.. to actually steal someones story is about the lowest thing u could
do, however i'm sure there are people out there low enough to do it..
feel free to disagree.. but to the best of my knowledge usenet does not
convey any inherent rights to the poster.. quite the opposite. .. when u
post here ur making the thing public domain and basically kissing it
goodbye..
-a
Shade
concerned, all you have to do it print a copy prior to posting and mail it to
your self with the postmark on the seal.... I've done that before. it does
stand up in court and if you have that, many back down anyway.
Shade
d.LiNeAtE
wrote:
>unfortunately when u publish in a public forum u have voided all of ur
>rights to that work, both legally and practically. if i chose to i
>could cull my personal favorites from acc and publish them without
>giving a dime or an ounce of credit to the original authors..
>
>this is why i don't play here anymore.. inconsiderate is an empty word.
>if u can't defend ur position its useless to take it..
No, by posting in a public forum you do not give up any rights.
Posting in a public forum does not automatically make your work
part of the PUBLIC DOMAIN, unless you state that fact. If you
post, it *belongs* to you, you retain all rights unless you deny
those rights.
Look at the texts in the eff, a lot of those authors state that
readers may redistribute, but it is separately mentioned. They
gave up part of those rights explicitely.
d.
Joan Marie Shields
jack <ja...@XXXgod-eater.org> wrote:
>> under us copyright law the author owns it. no "and if or butt." that
>> means where ever it is made available... this is what the changes in
>> copyright law have done for you... the acc work has been published AND
>> copyrighted...
sicarius <d...@null.com> wrote:
>i disagree with that statement and so does my lawyer. if a thing is
>published theres usually a bit of a trail to go along with it.. vital
>documents.. contracts, a fucking check. u'v got some proof. its urs, u can
>demonstrate this fact.
jack <ja...@god-eater.org> wrote:
>u can't prove ownership of anything "published" (and that term seems very
>out of place in this context) on usenet. u can't even clearly establish
>ownership of the work let alone rights to it.. now if u went to the
>trouble of copyrighting a thing before u sent it out, either mailing it off
>to the feds and getting some papers or sending it through the post office
>(we all know this trick right? mail an envelope with the work in ? to
>urself, the thing gets stamped and dated by a federal authority.. long as
>the thing remains sealed its a bit of proof) then u would have a shot.. but
>i doubt many of us bothered..
You might want to look into getting a new lawyer, Jack.
I own the copyright on anything that I write. You do have a point in that
even though I do have that copyright proving it might be difficult if I
only rely on when it was posted to a newsgroup. Archives help - I know of
at least a couple from alt.cyberpunk.chatsubo in existance (from the old
days). Having hardcopies on-hand doesn't hurt either. Mailing a copy to
yourself is a very poor-man's method and doesn't always work in establishing
a timeline (it's something of a myth that many people swear by). The best
thing to do is, if you're not going to send your work out for publication,
is to document it.
As for trying to steal someone else's work - well, it can be tricky. You
might get away with it a few times but that generally won't last long,
especially if you try to make serious mone from it. Get caught once and
everything else you try and pass off as yours becomes suspect.
>my point being that posting a thing on usenet does not constitute
>publication in any conventional sense.. nor does it convey the same
>privledges as publishing in a print forum. unless u take the time to
>establish ur rights before u post ur fucked. i have published in newspapers
>and mag's in the past.. every time i signed a contract.. got a check. i
>have my proof. here u have no such thing.. do u really think someone is
>going to track an ip address from a couple of years ago and link it to a
>given account on god only knows what isp and link that to user X, the
>obvious author of story Y? get real. u know better.. if u post in an
>anonymous public forum u can kiss ur rights goodbye.
Having a check is helpful but not absolutely necessary to have been
published. For instance, I created the Mechanics Guild (might be before
y'all's time here) and I have considerable proof that I did indeed do
this. Witnesses, archival documentation and hard-copy documentation.
I have these things because that particular storyline means a lot to me.
Other things (bits of fiction) I've posted I don't really care about -
if someone wants to poach them, well, all I can say is that they must be
pretty desperate.
If someone is really that concerned about their work they should send it
off to a magazine (hard-copy or on-line mag). They should also either
invest in or look for WRITERS DIGEST at your local library. Many states
have Writers groups - for instance, North Carolina has a Writers Network
I would strongly suggest any writer living in NC join.
joan shields
--
Joan Shields jshi...@uci.edu
http://www.ags.uci.edu/~jshields
University of California - Irvine School of Social Ecology
Department of Environmental Analysis and Design
alias
> >unfortunately when u publish in a public forum u have voided all of ur
> >rights to that work, both legally and practically. if i chose to i
> >could cull my personal favorites from acc and publish them without
> >giving a dime or an ounce of credit to the original authors..
> >
> >this is why i don't play here anymore.. inconsiderate is an empty word.
> >if u can't defend ur position its useless to take it..
>
> No, by posting in a public forum you do not give up any rights.
> Posting in a public forum does not automatically make your work
> part of the PUBLIC DOMAIN, unless you state that fact. If you
> post, it *belongs* to you, you retain all rights unless you deny
> those rights.
>
> Look at the texts in the eff, a lot of those authors state that
> readers may redistribute, but it is separately mentioned. They
> gave up part of those rights explicitely.
>
there is a difference between practical application and legal ideal.
yeah yeah yeah.. u own it.. wow, thats great. now prove it.
personally i don't see the point in bothering.
-a
alias
jshi...@rigel.oac.uci.edu says...
> I own the copyright on anything that I write.
sure u do.. if u can prove its urs.
You do have a point in that
> even though I do have that copyright proving it might be difficult if I
> only rely on when it was posted to a newsgroup. Archives help - I know of
> at least a couple from alt.cyberpunk.chatsubo in existance (from the old
> days).
sure.. except they use fake names..
Having hardcopies on-hand doesn't hurt either. Mailing a copy to
> yourself is a very poor-man's method and doesn't always work in establishing
> a timeline (it's something of a myth that many people swear by).
yet its better than nothing.
The best
> thing to do is, if you're not going to send your work out for publication,
> is to document it.
my point being that posting it on usenet under a ficticious name is not
documenting it..
>
> As for trying to steal someone else's work - well, it can be tricky. You
> might get away with it a few times but that generally won't last long,
> especially if you try to make serious mone from it. Get caught once and
> everything else you try and pass off as yours becomes suspect.
i'm not in the least bit concerned about someone making money off it..
its enough to lose something i worked on and valued.. tell me i'm wrong
all day long.. its already happened to me.
> Having a check is helpful but not absolutely necessary to have been
> published.
depends on ur standards ; ) i'm a whore. love is money.
d.LiNeAtE
wrote:
>there is a difference between practical application and legal ideal.
>yeah yeah yeah.. u own it.. wow, thats great. now prove it.
One has to be somehow waiting for shit to happen when posting in
this forum. Think about that ;-)
>personally i don't see the point in bothering.
Yeah, I know. It's great to find out you have rights.
d.
Huw Lyan Thomas
wrote in message news:7d3a9usbe8ep2re3g...@4ax.com...
> On Sun, 17 Mar 2002 13:50:00 -0500, "." <long...@juno.com> wrote:
> I'm siding with d. on this. This story is in the Anthology, and you
> really should have asked for permission to post this first. Maybe
> David won't object, but as an anthology contributor, I certainly do.
> I've withdrawn all the stories on my site that appeared in the book,
> to limit their availability in any form other than print.
I agree with your sentiments, but my feeling is that making it easy for
people to sample your work online can only help raise the profile of the
book.
Huw
Monkey Doctor
<h...@NOhexSPAMlibrisPLEASE.com> wrote:
>I agree with your sentiments, but my feeling is that making it easy for
>people to sample your work online can only help raise the profile of the
>book.
They can... just not the specific stories in the book... check my
site.