On Mon, May 10, 2004 at 07:46:36PM -0700, Philip Hart <philiph at slac.stanford.edu> wrote: > On Mon, 10 May 2004, Matthew Hunter wrote: > > On Mon, May 10, 2004 at 04:42:14PM -0700, Jerry Friedman <jerry_friedman at yahoo.com> wrote: > > > --- Bill Stewart <wks at worldpath.net> wrote: > > > > I don't THINK the link has been given, but Our Lord and Master has given > > > > an interview with Bookslut: > > > > http://www.bookslut.com/features/2004_05_002065.php > > > > If it has been given, this worthless dung from a dzur apologizes. > > > Thanks for the link! As people have been saying, the part about > > > someone here suggesting an idea that Steven was planning is a > > > bit scary. (If that's a sentence.) > > > > When this problem has come up elsewhere, the problem has been > > solved in two ways that I know of: > > > > 1) A massive disclaimer in the welcome message that says that you > > forfeit any right to your ideas by posting them to the list, in > > order to make the author feel safer about reading the list. > > You've have to ask a lawyer whether it actually had teeth. > > > > 2) When the producer of Babylon-5 was participating in online > > forums, a system eventually evolved whereby he read only > > moderated forums and the moderators aggressively deleted anything > > that resembled a story idea. If anything slipped through there > > was much chastisement. > > > > Frankly, I prefer the first system. > > 1) Can anyone expect copyright on broad plot ideas expressed in a public > forum? I'm fairly sure the answer is no, but it could generate a pissed-off fan and a lot of bad PR, hence the preemptive warning. > 2) Wow, what a pain. > While the above is interesting, I really hope that we find out in the > fullness of time what the prescient list idea was. It would be interesting, yes. -- Matthew Hunter (matthew at infodancer.org) Public Key: http://matthew.infodancer.org/public_key.txt Homepage: http://matthew.infodancer.org/index.jsp Politics: http://www.triggerfinger.org/index.jsp