copyright Robert M. Slade, 2006
(with that little (c) symbol thrown in for good measure)

I got asked to do a 20 year retrospective on computer viruses for a
tech magazine. (The Brain virus is thought to have been released in
1986: there is a string of “(c)1986Brain” in the body of the virus
that is presumably a copyright notice, which is highly ironic for a
number of reasons.) There were a few oddities about the request, such
as a demand for graphics. I normally don’t do graphics, but I had
such a fun time doing the article that I gave in, and finally put
together quite a piece, I thought. It was a gas going back over all
the stuff I’ve seen over the years.

You may never see it.

See, I got this phone call from the magazine today. It seems that
some of the wording in my article bears a striking resemblance to a
site on the Internet: “Robert Slade’s Computer Virus History” at
http://www.cknow.com/vtutor/RobertSladesComputerVirus.html.

This is surprising?

I’ve been writing articles, series, and books about viruses since the
darn things started. As a matter of fact, it’s a bit surprising that
they didn’t find more sites with my stuff on it, especially since
there have been dozens of examples that I’ve seen myself, over the
years, where people have used my material and passed it off as their
own.

But it seems that this outfit has a policy where they won’t publish
anything that has already appeared on the net.

I suppose that’s fair enough. Everybody is getting really antsy about
copyright violations these days, and, as somebody who does an awful
lot of writing, I suppose I should approve.

Except I don’t. The crackdown (and crankdown) on copyright and
copying is making it hard for a lot of us who are relying on our own
research and writing. After all, who else am I going to use for
material on virus history? Oh, lots of people were there, but who
else wrote it down? I do go back (and did go back, for this article)
and check on specifics, and even made corrections on items we’ve found
out more about. But, by and large, if I want to generate a decent
timeline of what happened, I have to rely very heavily on my own
stuff.

Except, now I can’t.

Well, like I said, you may not get to see the history article. Or, if
they are willing to bend their policy a bit, you might. But I’m
willing to bet that their policy is more important to them. After
all, they can always get another writer to do it for them.

Of course, in all probability he won’t know anything about the history
of viruses.

Or, he can read my stuff. And reuse it.

copyright Robert M. Slade, 2006
(with that little (c) symbol thrown in for good measure)

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