Lineland vs. %list folks words - a brief review

[Jules Siegel]

At 10:44 PM 05/8/97 -0400, jester <jester at snet.net> wrote:

>It's certainly not downright plagiarism, and Jules does cite each author --
but the permission thing still gets in the way... especially since, in my
opinion, some of the posts and subject matter included might be fuel for
someone's article or essay -- which in the end COULD have commercial value.

I appreciate the rest of your remarks, but I want to take very strong
exception to the sentence above. Using "plagiarism" even with a modifier is
really very unfair here.

Specifically, which items are you including? All of John Mascaro's
observations had prior review. Andrew gave me his enthusiastic carte blanche
to use anything he wrote. The fact that any given item is quoted in the book
does not in any way diminish it's presumed commercial or scholarly value.
These aren't exclusive tidbits. They are, at best, academic chats. The
majority of the minor items aren't really much more than scholarly chewing gum.

I could have gone through and paraphrased each minor posting, but that
wasn't the point of the book. It also could have been quite unfair, as it
would have enabled me to to distort the comment, whether cosciously or
unconsciously, in the direction that best suited my own aims.

Maybe if you think of it as a visit to a literary cocktail party with each
of these items as a kind of snapshot of a guest, it will make more sense.
It's also a modern version of a very old form, the epistolatory book.

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