From: Larry Smith <[l--rr--s] at [zk3.dec.com]> Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.dnd Subject: Re: TSR and their laws. Date: 16 Feb 1996 14:35:27 GMT [s k reyn] at [netcom.com] (Sean K Reynolds) wrote: >> It's quite a nice newsreaders, but it has missing features...anyway, >> I don't respond to people who are only interested in furthering old >> flame- wars, which is obviously his intent. > Do you really consider that a flame, Larry? I took your statement of >"there is nothing I can do," and I extrapolated that to presume you didn't >vote, for the same reasons. Hardly a flame. No, there is nothing I _want_ to do. Frankly, I devoutly hope you and TSR get _exactly_ what you are asking for. I am sick and tired of dis- cussing it with you, or any of the other TSR-die-hards, and there are many other companies here on the net with more enlightened attitudes that are more concerned with their customers, and I am supporting them. I am still reading this newsgroup because of the general RPG discussion that spins off from the D&D-stuff, and I don't care to get drawn into these threads any more. No matter what anyone says, all you are ever going to do is post the same thing all over again. I'm tired of proof by repeated assertion. I don't think you have ever argued in good faith, nor do I think this letter-writing campaign will accomplish anything. Frankly, Sean, the only thing I think _will_ accomplish something is for somebody, somewhere, to seriously hurt TSR, much the same way someone seriously hurt Canter and Siegal. Halcyon was apparently an idle threat, but as more and more of the world gets on-line there will be more and more opportunities for someone to do just what he suggested someplace where you _can't_ get at them so easily. I think only when TSR is forced to defend its real and legitimate rights it won't have _time_ to defend the ones it made up. No one can police everyone in the world all the time. We can't even do that for serious crimes, never mind copyrights. Laws work only because _most_ people will obey them even if no one is watching them. Civiliza- tion itself depends on this ethic. When you assert rights most people _don't_ think you have, when you bully people and demand they respect those rights, you erode that ethic. Halcyon was your first warning that this can happen, that some people are thinking seriously not only about disrespecting the fictional rights you demand, but the real and legal ones that _are_ yours - purely for _revenge_. I won't support it. I disagree with it intensely, fully as intensely as I disagree with you. But I can't stop it any more than you can, any more than I could stop you. As Chuq von Rospach once observed, "anarchy means having to put up with things that really piss you off." >> You'd think for all his whining about my angry and abrasive >> personality he'd be glad I didn't care to talk to him. > > Where was I whining about your angry and abrasive personality? Oh, >that's adirect quote from my _personal_ web page! Who forced you to read >my posts, and then voluntarily visit my home page, Larry? I'm sorry, but >you're firing blanks here. _You_ are the one who asserts that the web is a "publication", _you_ are the one who is publishing derogatory _opinions_ of a _private_ individual. _By_your_own_logic_ what you are doing on that web page is libel, pure and simple. It is also conduct entirely unbecoming someone who is supposed to be representing a company on the net, it is unprofessional. You ignored a polite email request to remove that page, and instead you made it worse. You are giving me a personal reason to take you, TSR _and_ AOL to court and establish once and for all if the web _is_ a publication. I think you and I are going to meet face to face, Sean. -- | .-. .---..---. .---. .-..-. |...when all government...in little as in great | | |__ | | || |-< | |-< > / |things...be drawn to Washington...it will ren- | `----'`-^-'`-'`-'`-'`-' `-' |der powerless the checks provided...and become | --- My own opinions only --- |as venal and oppressive as [England].Jefferson