Dear Sir, I notice that you have blatantly copied and placed my pages (Kafer Battleship) on your site without: 1/ any form of credit 2/ a link to my site 3/ asking me I look forward to hearing from you. Andy Goddard
His allegations were true, obviously. I had placed his pages on my site without 1 any form of credit (because I didn't know from where my friend Papyrus91 had found them), 2 without a link to his site (because I didn't know from where my friend Papyrus91 had found them), and 3 asking him (because... well, I'm sure you can see the pattern for yourself by now).
I replied to his mail a few minutes after I'd logged on to my provider and found out about it, that I obviously would credit his work on my site (well, what was left of it - I had rewritten large parts of it already to make it fit the Buck Rogers in the XXVc Century universe instead of the 2300AD universe) but that I couldn't do so just now, because I didn't have neither the time nor the inclination to do so.
He replied that that would be okay by him, I deleted that mail but kept this one as a reminder to myself, and thought the matter finished. I didn't do anything about my web-pages for a long while, as I was saving many small changes up to a big one.
Then, something else happened that forced me to take action. Suddenly, I got an e-mail from my provider forwarding a mail from the same Andy Goddard, asking my provider to remove two pages from my site, as they infringed his copyright. My provider asked me to straighten things up, and I immediately sent a mail to them saying they shouldn't worry. I then set about the task of replying to Mr. Goddard's mail, and got the following answer (oh yeah, and it was then gotten to the 25th of November).
At 07:23 PM 11/24/99 +0100, you wrote: >I'm sorry you felt you had to drag my provider into this. Your email address was bouncing throughout Monday for me, and I didn't know whether you were still actively on that server. This is why I emailled your provider (the obvious point of contact regarding infringements, as they're the only ones with the ability to do something about it). >I've now updated >my web-pages, as I have promised earlier. >...if you still feel you're improperly credited for the >material on my web page, I'm afraid you'll have to tell me so in a new >mail. Ok. There are a couple of issues here. The rights to 2300 are owned by Tantalus. In the original page, I provided a link to a disclaimer which Tantalus ask *all* 2300 sites to show. Your blatant word-for-word copy of a section of my site does not do this. Tantalus could, conceivably, take issue over this matter and even (worst case) ask unofficial sites such as mine to stop producing material, as they could say - at any time - that it violates their ownership rights. I wouldn't like this. I visited your site at 0900GMT and saw that the work which I did on this vessel is still not (apparently) credited to me, nor is there a link to my site where these files were copied from. I am increasingly concerned at the level of plagiarism on the internet; and while I want to do work that will help fellow roleplayers (through producing materials that can be downloaded and used for free) I *strongly* object to the copying and re-use of my material on your site. Therefore I request that you remove these pages. Andy
Not credited? That's strange - and I who even had checked that the HTML code I'd written worked. I sent a reply to Mr. Goddard where I pointed out that he might have forgotten to refresh the page or flush his cache where an outdated copy might be hiding. Furthermore, the bouncing e-mails was probably caused by some dead mailer daemon or other at my mail server as I didn't notice anything. However, not wanting to argue a moot point with someone obviously angry with me, I merely requested a seven day grace period until I had to remove the pages in question, because a) I positively loathe blind links on a page, and b) I had to have that time to be able to comply with his wishes.
I didn't hear anything from Mr. Goddard, and haven't up until now either (today - or rather, tonight's Sunday evening November 5th). However, my seven days were up on Friday, so that's why I'm in the process of completely rewriting the entire piece to the Buck Rogers universe.
Remember, copying from one source is plagiarism, copying from several is research. And reading several sources and then writing something new, is original. In short, that's why I had to rewrite the pages in question. Which wasn't entirely a bad thing either, because I had a couple of ideas I wanted to include in any case...