Path: utzoo!yunexus!geac!syntron!jtsv16!uunet!husc6!mailrus!wasatch!utah-gr!uplherc!sp7040!obie!wes
From: wes@obie.UUCP (Barnacle Wes)
Newsgroups: news.misc
Subject: Re: The Cincinnatus Society of Pinheads
Summary: Dear obnoxious math grad...
Message-ID: <231@obie.UUCP>
Date: 22 Oct 88 17:10:07 GMT
Article-I.D.: obie.231
References: <15638@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Organization: the Well of Souls
Lines: 43

In article <15638@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>, weemba@garnet.berkeley.edu (Obnoxious Math Grad Student) writes:
| Last January, I posted an article to sci.{astro,physics}.  I thought it
| was a rather nice article, answering (perhaps) someone's questions about
| what Stephen Hawking was saying about black holes and quantum mechanics
| and God in some news article.
| 
| Recently, a friend on Usenet informed me that this very article was pub-
| lished in THE CINCINNATUS SOCIETY JOURNAL #2 (Feb-Apr 88), and he mailed
| me a photocopy of this issue.  I got it this afternoon, and I was totally
| flabbergasted.
| 
| This journal is the official rantzine for the Cincinnatus Society, "a
| group of individuals choosing to communicate amicably with one another
| about topics of interest to persons who have achieved the level of in-
| telligence of at least the top one-tenth of one percent of the general
| United States population."
| 
| AAARGH!  I *HATE* these Hi-IQ societies, starting with MENSA and work-
| ing your way down (or "up", as the members would say).  [...]
| 
| THIS IS NOT A JOKE.  THESE PINHEADS REALLY EXIST, AND REALLY PUBLISHED
| MY ARTICLE WITH NO INDICATION THAT THEY JUST PICKED IT SOMEWHERE OUT
| OF THE AETHER, AND I AM READY TO VOMIT.
| 
| ucbvax!garnet!weemba	Matthew P Wiener/Brahms Gang/Berkeley CA 94720

The first protection that comes to mind is to copyright EVERYTHING you
post.  This is pretty simple, really, just put a copyright notice on it.
For instance, make your .signature look something like this:

	Copyright 1988 Wesley R. Peters.  Permission is granted to
	distribute this work in its entirety as long as it is not
	modified in any way, and this copyright remains intact.
	No rights other than those expressed here are granted.

As a matter of fact, I have just edited my .sig to include this very
paragraph.  I have had a couple of bad experiences with being quoted out
of context on the net, but never anything like what happened to Mr.
Wiener.

Do we have any lawyers around here?  I would like to think there is some
legal action MPW can take against these pinheads for publishing his
writing without his consent.