more info..
smh
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 15 Jun 1999 11:57:01 -0700
From: Amy Alexander <alexATplagiarist.org>
To: Steev <steevATdetritus.net>
Subject: Re: dupont goes after plagiarist
On Tue, 15 Jun 1999, Steev wrote:
>
> amy,
>
> wow, this is amazing news. Do you have the actual letter they sent? was it
> an official cease and desist or just a scary letter? (because only an
> actual cease-and-desist, which is signed by a judge, really forces you to
> do anything). I assume that either way, CalArts immediately caved in.
> however, this all seems imminently defensible to me.
> caving is it. it boils down to, i don't think dupont had much in the way
of real legal grounds because there wasn't any actual confusion possible.
so they decided to harrass me instead by portraying me as a scumbag to my
employer. they never sent a letter explaining legal justification for
their threats, they made phone calls to calarts saying they would sue if i
didn't cease and desist. then they faxed a huge amount of material,
including a printout from a web search for the word "plagiarist" - as
though all the results referred to me.... the printout of the page at
http://www.thejewishworld.com/JDGG/_disk2/00000148.htm entitled, "Watch
Your Ass Plagiarist" in which someone claiming to be from the Jewish
Defense League attacks someone else (i believe it's a rabbi with an
unpopular radio show) for allegedly making death threats against their
p.r. director.... as though that has anything to do with me.... also the
printout of the "finger" of me at muse - which does not connect to
plagiarist - in which my .plan quotes excene cervenka on the unabomber vs.
tax-dollars quip. they told calarts (dean houchin) they were particularly
upset about that one... which has nothing to do with the plagiarist.org
site! it's like complaining about plagiarist because i have a messy
apartment - they're just coming up with whatever they can to smear me to
calarts in order to put pressure on me.
my favorite part is that as part of their evidence they printed out 12
pages of the plagiarist manifesto. you might remember, the manifesto is a
cgi that generates itself as people hit the page, by combining text from
other manifestos to create this document that makes no sense but sounds
very over-passionate and pompous. there's a "next" link at the bottom of
the page that simply makes the script generate another page of text. so
it goes on forever if you keep hitting the link. so, i'm picturing this
lawyer-type sitting there printing out page after page of this drivel that
makes no sense, wondering when the hell it is going to end....
it's especially cute to see it all printed out with "Dupont Legal
Trademarks" in the fax header of each page... i'm going to have to scan
all this back in and put it on the site; it's perfect for
plagiarist.org...
dupont also told dean houchin they've got several of the other
corporations listed
on the page riled up and we'll be hearing from them too - at least we
would if the page didn't come down. it's probably true, i see several of
their names in my access logs over the past weeks. in the past day i seem
to be getting quite a few hits from law firms specializing in intellectual
property cases!
i'm pretty sure they did this sneaky move last week of getting me to call
them from calarts to verify i worked here... i got a call from someone at
"computer sciences corp" with a delaware area code asking me to call
regarding an "urgent matter." i returned the call and got voice mail, but
never heard back. the delaware thing is too weird a coincidence to be
anything else.
more of a conspiracy theory - i'm kinda wondering if they had anything to
do with the warez site that was put on shoko's anonymous ftp last weekend?
the stuff was hidden in my "webcast" directory from the isea recycler
project.... i found it there because tom has ftpd log everything in
shoko's syslog, and it was getting a million hits... i assumed it was
script kiddies (saw attempts at non-existent anonymous ftp's in our whole
lab last week) and it probably is, because it's hard to know that stuff is
mine but easy to see that it's the easiest directory to hide something
in.... but the timing is perfect and i wouldn't put it past dupont to do
it in the hopes that after portraying me as a scumbag to my employer
they'd investigate all my files and "discover" i was hosting a warez site!
:-)
> if you want to put an archive version of the page they objected to, and
> any other documentation, on Detritus.net, i can set it up. In fact if you
> think it would give you more artistic freedom and/or less stress, you can
> move all of plagiarist.org to my server.
>
wow, thanks for the offer! what's funny is, it doesn't look like dupont
knew or cared if plagiarist.org actually was running from a calarts
server. from what they sent, they just looked me up as the domain owner,
discovered i worked at calarts, and decided to go after calarts with it.
it never occurred to calarts that it wasn't part of www.calarts.edu. in
fact, they apparently got so scared they had muse's website shut down
until i took the page off... of course, none of plagiarist.org is even on
muse!
> also, do you mind if i forward your message to the rumori list?
>
sure, i'd like to get the word around and it at least looks like calarts
isn't going to try to interfere with any statements i want to make on the
matter. there is one correction to the text i sent yesterday though... the
person that supposedly made the death threats against moshe weinberg does
not appear to call *himself* plagiarist; that was just the way he was
addressed in the posting dupont found. so that line should read, "a
completely unrelated person referred to as 'plagiarist'".
i'll be writing more documentation and sending it around as i have time.
c-ya,
-amy
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-amy alexander amyATplagiarist.org
alexATshoko.calarts.edu http://shoko.calarts.edu/~alex/
:-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-)
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