for 24 May 2000. Updated every WEEKDAY.
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Filler You, I don't want to marry you anymore!! Why can't you just accept that and move on? You are joking about not having a bong, right? Ci$co <fvelasqu@ball.com> Oh my god. It really doesn't reflect very well on you, that you could be so cavalier about what we had together. Your decisions, apparently made quite casually, negatively and irreparably impacted my current reality and my future. Yet you refuse to take responsibility for the tragic circumstances that you created. How is it possible that I was so totally deluded about your ability to make a lifetime commitment? And then, to add insult to injury, you have to push the envelope and make a joke about something that you bought for me for my birthday! You know how I treasured that bong, yet you blithely absconded with it when the caca hit the GE Oscillating Room Unit! You dog. I've lost all respect for you. I'd wish you harm if I didn't know, deep down, that you'll pay the price for your neglect more than you can possibly know right now. Well, you're young. Good luck out there, buddy. You're gonna need it. Polly  Dear Polly - I have started getting the strangest sensation that you and Terry Colon the cartoonist might be close. Perhaps lovers, or even the same exact person. Or both. Am I hallucinating? Or just sucking between the lines? Best, Steve Rapaport <steve@petabit.com> Terry and I are not lovers, nor are we the same person. I wish we were the same person so I could sit around drawing pictures of stuff the way he does. However I'm sure he's very clear on the fact that he'd rather not be the same person as me. See how lopsided this stuff is? Love bites, man. Try not to suck between the lines from now on. Polly Hi Polly, In a recent Fish response, you said: "You want encouragement and sincerity, check out a copy of InStyle magazine. They'll even tell you what brand of lipstick Heather Locklear wore on last week's cover!" Actually, Brill's Content did an article a while ago on fashion magazines, and noted that the makeup credits for the cover models are rotated through the magazine's major advertisers, and are not really what the models had on. One quote from a magazine insider said [something to the effect of] "There's no way that [makeup] was within 50 feet of the shoot." As for Shaq, this is the first year since he left the Magic that I've been rooting for him, and that's only because I want to see Penny Hardaway go down in flames. Back to the bong, Mike Mustaine <mustaine@earthlink.net> (No relation to Dave, although my cousin says I look a little like him) No — say it ain't so! I've got a crate full of Amber Twilight eye shadow that says I do have the power to look just like Sarah Michelle Gellar! This is America! Money buys everything, and don't you forget it! Look what money did for the Lakers, for one thing! So there! Polly Hardaway Polly, The latest Filler episodes have been...how shall we say...less than enjoyable. What happened to the whiny, bitter girly girl of yore? Less mostly transparent faux self-criticism as a front for obsessive narcissism and more Mr. Flinchy! Twenty-something males are the cause of and solution to all a masochistic-gal- suffering-from- low-self-esteem- and-some-form-of- chronic-dysphoria's problems. This is all ye know and all ye need to know. Lady Carlisle Girly girl?!! How long have you been reading Filler? Whiny and bitter yes, but girly girls are a horse of a different color. Besides, obsessive narcissism is the foundation on which this church was built. Twenty-something males are merely the spittoon in which we mistakenly bless ourselves upon exiting. Furthermore, what's the cure to low self-esteem and chronic dysphoria? Again, obsessive narcissism! But I don't need to tell you that, Lady Carlisle. With a signature like that, I trust you've got plenty of extra narcissism in the ice box saved up in case of natural disaster or unforeseen break-up. Do you really think I'd pretend to criticize myself just for your benefit? All self-criticism is 100% real — and absolutely necessary to keep that overconfidence in check. Mix some self-criticism in with your narcissism and see for yourself. Tasty, no? Anyway, masochism is sooo early-twenties. I think it's time you watered your plants and read a good book. Self-congratulatorily, but supportively, yours, Polly Pirate Flags You're a cynical dumbass. Here's why - I just read volumes of documentation as part of a paper, "Case Studies of Hacker Resistance," where I interrogate the cases of Gnutella (often called a Napster clone, though it's not), DeCSS, and such wacky pirates as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Richard M. Stallman, Eric S. Raymond, Atty. Garbus, etc. etc. etc. warez d00dz one and all. You flat-out get things wrong in your article, like the crack about Richard M. Stallman enforcing the GPL - RMS enforces a license which is the *opposite* of copyright, "copyleft," for god sakes. How is deriding A and enforcing Z hypocritical? Oh, I forgot, you didn't get that far in your research. For that reason, your article dissolves into FUD and half-witted rhetoric to anyone who scours to dig your argument out of it's sad abyss. I suggest you read a couple of the following before attempting to comment on the mechanics of digital dissemination these days — The Economy of Ideas A framework for patents and copyrights in the Digital Age. (Everything you know about intellectual property is wrong.) http://www.eff.org/cafe/barlow.html Understanding You Rights Online: Copyright Protection on the Internet http://www.eff.org/cafe/gross2.html If you understand how the concepts of "idea" and "product" change and become inextricably linked in a networked, digital marketplace/community, you realize why Prof. Fisher may have had a point. Oh, and tell Polly she's da bomb. <creon@brown.edu> Polly, you're the bomb. Now: If I'm a cynical dumbass, then you're an ivory-tower pansy. Ever tried to make a living in your idealized, Barlow-fueled world, boy-o? You can't eat rhetoric. Stallman enforces his ownership rights over the GNU code, no matter what cute little name he gives those rights. He gets to do this because he created the software. A leads to B — simple as that. But bits is bits, and the music industry gets to do exactly the same thing, no matter how much high-falutin' language Stallman manages to wrap around his opinions or how much good-for- the-world charity he claims. And as for "how the concepts of 'idea' and 'product' change and become inextricably linked in a networked, digital marketplace/community," you might want to back away from the faculty lounge, Bill, because the crack fumes are apparently pretty heavy. If I create something, I own it, and nobody — Harvard professor or not, EFF deep thinker or not — gets to walk off with it. You can pump all the New Economy cant you want into the conversation, but that does not change the extremely simple fact that it's mine, dammit, not his, not yours, not anybody else's. Greg Knauss Are you kidding? What IP leg do you have to stand on with your long-winded, crying tale of being heisted by the evil Harvard professor? Dear God, I hope you are being sarcastic. Besides giving you free ad time to the 100 or so people (many of whom are or will soon be rather wealthy and can afford all the offerings of your advertising clients) in his class by posting your name and link to your website (not to mention the rest of the world who might stumble on the site), what is wrong with his including your websites on his page? He is neither trying to profit from your article nor get around having to pay you royalties - as you do not get any - by unfairly copying a publication for his students that one should buy. Fair use, my friend, and helpful to you to boot. I'm not going to run off and research this on Westlaw but my gut feeling is you have no legitimate claim, and the practical implications are so one-sided for you and Suck that the arguments from Napster proponents resonate in your hollow logic. So, I might very well be wrong, legally, but practically you are being a tad ridiculous. Stick to the tech side of the arguments. Crying out just to try to be like the big boys on the block who are really getting screwed sounds even more pathetic when you have not been harmed. <jrw220@is2.nyu.edu> Here, I'll speak slowly so you can follow my lips: It's not a question of being harmed. It's not a question of being helped. It's not a question of royalties or advertising or illegality or practicality. It's a question of ownership. Suck owns "Project Zapster." Professor Fisher does not. If you've been paying attention for the last two sentences, then it shouldn't be such a leap to the fact that Professor Fisher has no right — zero, nada, zilch — to reproduce the whole damned article on his website. Of course, Suck (and its corporate master) doesn't give a damn that some Harvard egghead has gotten a little confused by the whole concept of off-site linkage, and isn't going to do anything about the appropriation other than make that point. But — again slowly — if you missed that, then you might want to up your coffee dosage. Oooooownership. Ooooownership. Greg Knauss Greg Knauss, Several people have alerted me to your recent denunciation of the copies I made of your essay on "Zapster" . Mistakenly thinking that one of the people who contacted me was the author of thesuck.net, I sent him the following email message — which I'm now sending to you (hoping that this time I have the right person). I want to reiterate my willingness to delete from my website the copies that have offended you. However, I'm guessing that you would prefer that I leave them in place - in other words, to leave the target of your attack intact. If so, I'm happy to do that as well. You will notice that I have added to the page a brief note referring readers who arrive at the page through my site rather than yours to the nature of the controversy. William Fisher Your message came as something of a shock. I had not expected or intended to "steal" your creations. To be sure, as your note seems to recognize, my behavior would almost certainly be privileged under the "fair use" doctrine. The copying was for educational purposes, I make no money from my essay, I included a link to your original site (and thus gave you credit for your fine work), and it's hard to imagine that my copying of your material would result in any injury to the potential market for your creations (quite the contrary). Those circumstances, in combination, would, as you suggest, almost certainly make my behavior a "fair use." However, all this is largely beside the point. The law ought not be the exclusive guide to conduct on the Internet. Customary standards of fair dealing are important as well. I thought (evidently erroneously) that I was adhering to those standards. It did not occur to me that you would resent the copying - provided that it was accompanied by a link to your site. Rather, I thought you might appreciate the few extra viewers I might send your way. (That, anyway, is how I react when people link to or copy my own stuff - provided, of course, that they give me credit.) Plainly, I made a mistake, and I apologize. I would be happy to do either of the following: (a) delete the copied files, leaving the link to thesuck.net in place. (The only reason I reproduced the files, by the way, was that I feared that they would not be available indefinitely; again, I may have been mistaken.) (b) delete all reference to thesuck.net. Just let me know which you would prefer. William Fisher Hauser Hall 410 Harvard Law School Cambridge MA 02138 homepage: http://www.law.harvard.edu/ Academic_Affairs/ coursepages/tfisher/ Dear Professor Fisher, Firstly, I appreciate your willingness to leave the copy in place, for exactly the reason you suggest: it allows the new article to make sense. (Though, you may be interested in pointing your links to the bit's permanent home, at https://www.thesuck.net/ daily/2000/05/16/.) Secondly, far from being offended, I'm thrilled that you found the original "Zapster" article amusing enough to reference to your readers. I consider it a compliment, and if I appear, ah, overly vehement about the subject in today's article, please chalk it up to someone taking advantage of the only time in his life when he'll get to use his second-tier- UC -school verbiage on a Harvard Law professor. I had written an intellectual property article that was in the initial editing stages when someone pointed out your copy of "Project Zapster" to me and it seemed too appropriate not to take full advantage of. It's a wrong place, wrong time thing. Thirdly, though I can't speak for my masters at Suck.com, Lycos.com, Terra.com or whoever else owns me when you happen to read this message, I personally don't have a problem with things staying just as they are, even if I do personally think that "fair use" is stretched pretty far in this particular case. I'm happy to debate the point if you want, but I expect you'd end up grinding me into paste, what with that whole research-doing thing you professors have got going. Finally, I can't tell you how much I appreciate your temperate response. Thank you. Greg Knauss Dear Professor Fisher, I am the editor of Suck.com. I concur with Greg Knaus's comments in his separate response to you. Although I too question whether reprinting the article in its entirety falls under the rubric of fair use, we prefer, as always, to deal with events through satirical comment rather than through an unpleasant hubbub. I suspect that our articles are frequently copied in toto into emails, usenet posts, etc. Since Suck.com's message is an important one that we believe should be distributed to the peoples of all nations, we have never pursued these matters, and we don't intend to start with your citation. In any event, as Greg noted, the situation was irresistibly apt to our current article. The one thing that did get my nose slightly out of joint was your reference to the article's being "derived from and available — for the time being — from [Suck]," since this invites the inference that Suck, the longest-running daily publication on the Web, is some kind of fly-by-night operation. And of course, since my own education consists of some correspondence drawing classes and a few course hours at the Barbizon School, I'm always happy to tweak the Ivy League. I hope this hasn't caused you any aggravation (beyond a few emails from our more vehement readers). I hope you'll continue to enjoy our articles, and on behalf of Suck.com, I wish you the very best. Big Tim Cavanaugh Editor, Suck.com Excellent piece today! Would you mind if I passed the text of this piece (an awful lot of folks in this building wouldn't be caught dead going to thesuck.net!) around to a few of the other librarians here in the building? <reitene@okstate.edu> Sure. But I want to you to scratch out my name at the bottom of the page and write yours just beneath it. Just to see if anybody's paying attention. Greg Well done. I wonder if the napster/gnutella /mIRC/hotline debate had been along the lines you point out in your article, would napster still have the overwhelming popular vote among the digerati? Probably, but not by such a wide margin I'm sure. "What a tangled web we weave...". It all seems to be about control, and there is no better place to lose control of everything from your ideas to your money (wanna invest in boo.com?) than the wild frontiers of the net. Unfortunately we see in the history of our own continent the relative ease and speed with which wild frontiers can be tamed. That was with the entire support of white society behind the effort. Is there enough division on this issue to prevent the total domestication of the web, or is napster our Edward Teach? I guess I'll just keep reading to find out. <mjean@fitt.ca> I hope that the Web never ends up domesticated, but, Lordy, can't the people who are trying to keep it wild do something a little more interesting than ripping off tedious heavy metal? They could at least confuse the law, rather than just move petty theft to a new medium. Sheesh. Greg |
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![[Tim Cavanaugh]](/fish/staff/images/tim.gif)
![[Phillip Bailey]](/fish/staff/images/phil.gif){kind=small}
