Tampered Article Notice: Please Circulate
By Claire Wolfe
[email protected]
Special to The Libertarian Enterprise
I have learned that an altered version of my article, "After the
Fall of Justice," is circulating on the 'net in violation of my
copyright. I ask that anyone who has posted the article to a web
site, reprinted it in a publication, or circulated it via e-mail
please check to see that their version hasn't been tampered with. If
you have the altered version, I ask that you correct it and send this
notice to others to whom you sent the article.
It's possible that some people receiving this may prefer the
altered version. That, however, isn't the point. The point is that
the alteration is illegal and offensive to the one who worked her buns
off to produce the article and who holds the copyright -- me. It is
an imposition upon my views and a violation of my author's rights
The tampering is small but important. Under the subhead "Myths
and Hopes," in the second paragraph, I wrote:
"This was never literally true, of course. Any poor, black man
can tell you the reality of justice."
An unknown person, operating outside the realm of ethics and
goodwill, and imposing his private version of "political correctness"
upon my writing, has altered that to read:
"This was never literally true, of course. Any poor White
Southerner can tell you the reality of justice."
As it happens, I sympathize with poor blacks, white southerners,
or anyone else who's suffered at the hands of an "injustice system."
Abuse against any individual or group is equally inexcusable. No one
should ever be denied justice because his or her views, race, place of
origin, or other characteristics are unpopular.
However, I do not have one iota of sympathy for a thief who steals
my words, a fraud who substitutes his words for my own, or a person
who violates a copyright statement that plainly says, "no changes
whatsoever" may be made to my work. This person was simply too lazy
and talentless to express his opinions in an original article, and
chose instead to be a blood-sucking leech, imposing his viewpoint and
his Embarrassingly Ignorant Capitalization upon his betters. (And we
are nearly all "betters" to this person; my cat has higher ethical
standards than this person.)
Although this illegal, but small, alteration may seem unimportant
to someone who's not in my position, anyone whose reputation hangs on
written words should see both the offense and the potential danger.
When strangers can illegally alter your writing at will, and those
distorted words propagate across the Internet at lightspeed, no writer
is safe from the depredations of casual creeps or agents provocateur.
Please, in respect to me, my copyright, and your own commitment to
honesty, make sure any version of "After the Fall" you've posted or
circulated is the version I wrote. And if it isn't the authentic
version, please help me correct it. If you have any question about the
validity of the copy you have, the original can be found at:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Lofts/2110/E_JusticeFall.html
or at the Liberty Activists site:
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/1797/essay.htm
I remind everyone that I allow non-commercial reprinting of my
published articles, without charge, on the sole condition that my work
not be altered in any way without my consent. That's very little to
ask. Even an ethically challenged person should be able to honor such
simple conditions.
Thank you to the honorable strangers and friends out there. I
will be continuing to watch for illegal copies of any of my work,
and I will insist that corrections be made. Anyone caught altering my
work without my express written consent is courting big trouble and
had better be aware of that.
Claire Wolfe is the author of 101 Things to Do 'Til the Revolution
(Loompanics Unlimited, 1996). Her next book, I Am Not a Number!,
dealing with resistance to the national ID card and related federal
databases, will be released in early 1998. Claire's e-mail address
was given incorrectly in TLE #37, and we apologize to her, as well as
to the gentlemen from Hawaii whose address we provided inadvertantly,
instead.