Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 14:40:58 -0700 (PDT) From: Michael Plump Subject: IDG has too many lawyers On Thu, 28 Oct 1999, Isabelle Drewelow wrote: > IDG Books Worldwide, Inc. ("IDG Books") is the publisher of the well-known > and well-regarded "...FOR DUMMIES" series of reference books and products. > It has come to my attention that you are using the subtitle "Smart_Host for > Dummies" in a chat room on your Web site at: > http://plug.skylab.org/199809/msg00428.html Is there any way I could get a complimentary copy of Chapter 7, section 5: "Patents, Copyrights, and Trademarks" of your book "Law for Dummies" (ISBN 1-56884-860-9)? In the meantime, I think you are mistaken here. What you saw was not a "chat room" or web board of any sort, but rather an archive of the Portland Linux Users' Group mailing list. The message you referenced was a reply to this message: http://plug.skylab.org/199809/msg00423.html That message is really nothing more than a suggestion that someone publish a book entitled "Sendmail for Dummies". (Presumably, IDG Books would publish this volume, since anyone else who published that title would get a rather nasty letter from IDG's trigger-happy lawyers.) If you read the message, you will note that everything he said was, in my opinion (though "I am not a lawyer" and, I'm guessing, "neither are you") completely legal and well within bounds. There is no "subtitle" of any "chat room" on my "Web site" which has that phrase in it. It's simply a message posted by someone else to a mailing list on a different server, with which I have no connection. Keep up the good work! You're a pro! --Michael Plump PS: any and all attempts to sue Joe Dietz or The Skylab Group would be a considerable waste of effort. Both are fictional entities.