hey junglizt -- that shit you pulled on gonzi isn't cool at all. i'm a
music journalist who's used gonzi's website a number of times for
pieces i was writing, and I appreciated the care he obviously put into
it. you may be right that on the net you can get away with filching
his hard work (i'm not well enough versed in issues of copyright laws
to know for sure, though i do know from working on a newspaper that
one need not place a copyright mark next to an article for it to be
considered copywritten -- there's such thing as common law copyright,
which is pretty damn binding). but even so, that doesn't excuse your
behavior. we're all _supposed_ to obey the law. where life gets
interesting is how people behave when things are left up to them.
there's nothing in the law that says i can't be mean to my girlfriend,
laugh in the face of homeless people, or even vote republican,
ferchrissake, but i don't do any of those things -- maybe because i
was raised properly (perhaps you were not so fortunate). i don't steal
shit in real life, even if i can get away with it, and while i know
there are needy people who simply have to steal out of desperation or
hunger, i can't imagine how you'd justify your pilferage. if you were
just looking to earn a reputation as a top-notch provider of jungle
info without actually doing the hard work, well the joke's on you --
we're onto your pathetic little game, and those of us who believe
there should be minimal standards of decency on the net will do our
damnedest to make sure everyone else knows about it too. the net may
not be, as its most hyperbolic boosters claim, a community, but it's
for sure a society -- a society that's having enough trouble fending
off the perfidous influence of big brother bill gates without ordinary
netdenizens acting like robber barons. thanks to the wisdom of the
supreme court, there are virtually no restrictions on netlife -- the
only tool we have for keeping things right online is our resolve to
treat each other decently. act like a man (or woman, as the case may
be): get permission from gonzi and give him some credit on yr webpage
or drop his stuff from your site.
jeff