For over a year, I have had problems trying to keep up with bringing out new issues at least every month, the way I had envisioned OmegaZine! to be a monthly e-zine on pop culture and off-the-beaten-path issues in these crazy times. The central point is lack of time--what with chores, homeschooling, my third novel I am trying to finish, a few paying jobs like my Media Issues columns for Suite101.com and other intermitent work. the other point is that no one has, lately, contributed to OmegaZine, materialwise. If I could pay for work this might not be a problem, but sites like Lew Rockwell don't pay either, and they have no trouble getting writers for free. Yet they are a daily site...again, I don't have the time for that. I don't have a Von Mises Institute, say, to fund me and keep me going. OmegaZine! has almost laways been a one-woman show. It is not, however, do to lack of interest on readers part--I am amazed at all the different e-mails I get about my articles (mostly positive. I think I've gotten only four hate mails since I started this in October, 1998).
The final straw came last week, though, when I got some e-mails from a copyright rep of Dr. John Coleman's. He wrote the landmark book, "The Conspirator's Hierarchy: The Story of the Committee of 300." If you have read any articles on popular culture that I have written, you know that I have rather extensively quoted from his work. Well, it turns out that this is a copyright violation! Coleman's reps have threatened to sue me if I continue to carry these articles (also they have threatened the website that reporduced the entire book on the Internet, and which my articles link to as well and provided the source of the quotes I used.). I consider Coleman's writings in this book regarding how popular culture has been devestated to be the number one source of my information, stuff you really can't find anywhere else. Since I can't even link to his work anymore (since it has been removed by wiretap.spies), there goes my source of info through hyperlink. Still, if by quoting extensively from Coleman's book I am violating a copyright (something I really do abhor), I have no choice but to remove the articles (somehow just paraphrasing what Coleman says doesn't have the impact I want to impart). You might say, "Well, you could have gotten his permission," and I could have, but that would have required waiting months, possibly years, and I couldn't wait. The stuff was too powerful, so I quoted it.
The final reason is because I am taking the entire omegaserv.com site down from the hosting service I now use. It has one of the cheapest hosting packages anywhere and has been a reasonably good service, but since I don't make any money through OmegaZine! and don't really need a commercial website and can put my material up on my ISPs network for free, I am cancelling my hosting service and will go with my ISP for my freelance writing/editing business, and will be putting OmegaZine! archived articles up on a free-service site that doesn't mind having politically incorrect materials (ruling out Geocities-Yahoo, no doubt.).
I will let readers know where else to find my articles once I have them up on a new host, provided they are subscribers to my mailing list, when the time comes. New writings on non-comformity, individuality, and fighting the herd mentality, will be posted on the new website I will be putting up shortly.
Later,
Deborah Lagarde, Editor, OmegaZine!