Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2006 20:37:01 -0800
From: Rob Slade
Subject: Risks of frequent publication
Copyright Gone Mad (copyright Robert M. Slade, 2006)
(with that little (c) symbol thrown in for good measure)
I got asked to do a 20-year retrospective on computer viruses for a tech magazine. There were a few oddities about the request, such as a demand for graphics. I normally don't do graphics, but I had such a fun time doing the article that I gave in, and finally put together quite a piece, I thought. It was a gas going back over all the stuff I've seen over the years.
You may never see it.
See, I got this phone call from the magazine today. It seems that some of the wording in my article bears a striking resemblance to a site on the Internet: "Robert Slade's Computer Virus History" at
http://www.cknow.com/vtutor/RobertSladesComputerVirus.html.
This is surprising?
I've been writing articles, series, and books about viruses since the darn things started. As a matter of fact, it's a bit surprising that they didn't find more sites with my stuff on it, especially since there have been dozens of examples that I've seen myself, over the years, where people have used my material and passed it off as their own.
But it seems that this outfit has a policy where they won't publish anything that has already appeared on the net.
I suppose that's fair enough. Everybody is getting really antsy about copyright violations these days, and, as somebody who does an awful lot of writing, I suppose I should approve.
Except I don't. The crackdown (and crankdown) on copyright and copying is making it hard for a lot of us who are relying on our own research and writing. After all, who else am I going to use for material on virus history? Oh, lots of people were there, but who else wrote it down? I do go back (and did go back, for this article) and check on specifics, and even made corrections on items we've found out more about. But, by and large, if I want to generate a decent timeline of what happened, I have to rely very heavily on my own stuff.
Except, now I can't.
Well, like I said, you may not get to see the history article. Or, if they are willing to bend their policy a bit, you might. But I'm willing to bet that their policy is more important to them. After all, they can always get another writer to do it for them.
Of course, in all probability he won't know anything about the history of viruses.
Or, he can read my stuff. And reuse it.
copyright Robert M. Slade, 2006
(with that little (c) symbol thrown in for good measure)
