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.