haiku error messages attribution

[Kathryn Frech <lib@STNY.LRUN.COM>]

This is from _another list I'm on that also published the haiku
recently.  Fortunately, someone there recognized where they were
from and could tell us.  Here're the facts:

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Subject: Giving Proper Credit for Humor Item: Haiku Error Messages

The haiku error messages which have been seen on the internet recently
originated in an online contest held by Salon Magazine.  Here's a brief
excerpt from "The Case of the Hijacked Haiku," by Scott Rosenberg:

"[I]nformation's new freedom -- hell, its profligacy and libertinism --
can still take one aback.  Consider the case of Salon 21st's Haiku Error
Messages -- a hugely popular installment of our 21st Challenge contest
series that inundated us with hundreds of  entries. We posted the results
on Feb. 10.  A week later, Charlie Varon -- who with his writing partner,
Jim Rosenau, creates and judges the Challenge -- received an e-mail from
his brother-in-law containing the entire list of error message haikus.
Charlie's relative had received the haikus -- stripped not only of any
reference to where they'd originally appeared but also of the individual
names of their authors -- from a humor mailing list; oblivious to their
origin, he thought they'd make a good idea for a new 21st Challenge
contest.
. . .
"Within 48 hours of our Web page's posting, the error haikus were hopping
from mailing list to mailing list and newsgroup to newsgroup. They wound
up on alt.support.headaches, misc.fitness.weights, rec.arts.poems,
 alt.fan.tom-robbins and alt.fan.pratchett (where the poster announced
she'd 'nicked these from a professional list I subscribe to'). Sometimes
they were credited to Salon, but the original removal of the writers'
names was never remedied.
. . .
What still puzzles me is the motivation of the original poster, the
ur-copyist who carefully excised the names of the haiku writers. Why
take the extra time to, uh, anonymize these ditties? Was he concerned
that leaving the names in would somehow make him more culpable for his
little act of information liberation?  Would the names interfere with
readers' enjoyment of the humor? Or did he just want the haiku to look
like instant Net folklore?
. . .
I won't presume to know whether our error message haikus themselves want
to be free or expensive, anonymous or attributed. But if you receive them
from a mailing list, tell the forwarder that you know where these poems
live and who wrote them, would you?"

******
Rosenberg's article in its entirety is posted on Salon's web site at:
http://www.salonmagazine.com/21st/rose/1998/02/24straight.html

The complete version of the haikus, with their authors' names, is at:
http://www.salonmagazine.com/21st/chal/1998/02/10chal2.html


----------------------------------
Kathryn Frech, Librarian
Seton Catholic Central H.S.
Binghamton, NY  13905
(lib@stny.lrun.com)

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