On Mon, Nov 04, 2002 at 12:34:50PM -0800, Brian Nelson wrote: > It was a scenario to consider, which was completely possible. I didn't > suggest it would happen in this particular case. What if the offending > word list contained only the words "the, if, and". Of course those > words would be immediately replaced.
And they didn’t occur in any other list? If that was what the list included, then we wouldn’t be having this argument; there is no copyright covering wordlists including “the, if, and” simply because it’s not reasonable. > > Identical, no. But many hackneyed or strongly genre‐bound novels do turn > > out increadibly similar to each other. > > Word-for-word identical? Are you on fucking crack? Are you? I understand what “Identical, no” means. But close enough that if you produced a work that similar to one of Harlan Ellison’s, you would be hit by a copyright‐infringement suit before it got to your publisher. > > I wouldn’t describe it as likely. The choice of words (do you add cwm? > > bakress? ye? luculent? cromulent? boxen? virii? f**k? The spelling > > without the astericks? I can see large debates on each of those words) > > and the large selection mean that any two wordlists are probably going > > to have significant differences in the set of words included. > > Don't waste time with retarded suggestions that have absolutely nothing > to do with the issue at hand. This is the heart of the matter. Should ‘cromulent’ be part of the wordlist? Despite not having a well‐defined meaning, it has a well‐defined spelling and currently common usage among a reasonably large group of people. That’s a creative decision there. Is ‘virii’ an acceptable spelling? Is ‘bakress’? -- David Starner - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Great is the battle-god, great, and his kingdom-- A field where a thousand corpses lie. -- Stephen Crane, "War is Kind"
