From: gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch)
Newsgroups: alt.feminism
Subject: Re: Gordon's Playboy Story
Date: 14 Oct 92 17:08:41 GMT
Organization: mydog in exile

gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch) writes:
| > I don't believe in libel and copyright restrictions, at least
| > not as they're presently constituted.  I suspect _Playboy_ has
| > a more restrictive view on copyright than I do.   

tjw@vms.cis.pitt.edu (TJ Wood)
| I'd be interested in seeing you flesh this paragraph out a bit.  What
| exactly don't you believe in when it comes to libel and copyright?

It's not tremendously relevant to the present discussion.  

In the case of libel, I think that the dangers of its misuse
outweigh the benefits of its use.  For instance, If you 
think I have sex with pigs, and want to talk about it, I 
think it's your right; most people will know what to do with
this sort of "information."  From what I read in the
(admittedly inaccurate) press, libel is usually used by
people who have a lot of power or money to silence political 
opposition.  The latest version of this is (as I mentioned)
lawsuits by developers and other destroyers of the
environment to harass and intimidate their critics.

The question of copyright is somewhat more ambiguous, but 
I think it's become greatly overextended.  For instance, if 
I make some copies of a _Playboy_ article on a copier, or 
quote it in its entirety on the Net, I'm theoretically 
violating copyright and could be sued, even though I'm not
making a nickel from my action or depleting _Playboy's_ 
sales in any likely way.  I think that's wrong.  If you 
want to argue about my opinions, though, I'd suggest a 
different newsgroup, e.g. talk.politics.theory.  The point
for this discussion was that almost everyone believes in
some limitations on expression.  When "censorship" is
presented as a binary issue, it's generally a phony
issue.

gf:
| > Also, I 
| > recently posted a little story in which people working for 
| > _Playboy_ allegedly attempted to get the law after some nude 
| > demonstrators, which I would not have, but I can't confirm 
| > that that really happened or that, if it did, it represented 
| > a corporate attitude.  We have to guess on that one.

tjw:
| You could try posting your story to Alt.folklore.urban.  It has all the
| trappings of an Urban Legend.

I saw photographs of the event, so that it took place at
all is not a legend.  Whether the _Playboy_ folks actually
called the police, however, I don't know.  The news story
said they did, but about 50% of what is reported in the
major news media is false, and the "Underground Press" was
even more playful in those days.   The idea that _Playboy_
tried to have them arrested for indecent exposure seems
too sweetly ironic to be true.

If I could think of a zippier ending....  How about, "The
_Playboy_ photographer called the police and demanded that
the demonstrators be arrested for indecent exposure.  The 
police responded by giving him more postcards than anyone
had every received before, and without thinking he put
them in the microwave oven and switched it on, turning them
into a gelatinous mass which was sold to the zoo as a 
sex object for lonely orangutans."  No?
-- 
 )*(    Gordon Fitch    )*(    gcf@panix.com    )*(
( 1238 Blg. Grn. Sta.,  NY NY 10274 * 718.273.5556 )