----- Original Message -----
From: Oscar Tan
To:
Simeon_Jones@psi-soft.co.uk
Cc: Beyond Dominia e-group ;
jokulgoblin@yahoogroups.com ;
meridianmagic@egroups.com ; Star City e-group
Sent: Monday, October 01, 2001 1:33 AM
Subject: Internet articles and intellectual dishonesty
Simeon, I'd like the other people who heard this to hear my reply as well.
The issue isn't you posting my articles on your site without any acknowledgement of my efforts or Beyond Dominia.
The issue is quite a bit of dishonesty and disrespect that I don't ever want to happen to another writer again.
I believe that your treatment of the issue is amazingly cavalier because:
1) If you received the information from an e-group, it doesn't necessarily mean you have permission from the author to post it on your site.
2) If you received the information from an e-group, it doesn't mean you can post it on your site without ACKNOWLEDGING THE AUTHOR.
3) Someone from the CPA said you claim you got the file you forwarded from the Beyond Dominia e-group which I moderate. It could actually be true, in which case there's no way you could have NOT KNOWN who wrote those articles.
4) And if you got it from the Beyond Dominia e-group, then you were certainly obligated to at least mention the URL instead of--intentionally or not--making it appear that someone sent the stuff to your site for posting.
If you "thought nothing more of it at the time" then I think you have a serious problem. I'm spelling it out to you that what you were doing is impolite and dishonest, at the very least.
And at the very least, that Sligh Primer you posted was so comprehensive that any decent editor like Scott Johns or The Ferrett would've thought to ask who wrote it. Not asking is pretty much like theft in this case, wouldn't you think?
Here's the link to the Sligh Primer:
http://www.bdominia.addr.com/discus/messages/9/13311.shtml
Check it out, and you tell me that you can believe some guy didn't put a lot of heart into that, considering it even has tourney reports and old Dojo references all the way back to 1995. And credit to people like Ben Rubin, Darwin Kastle, Eric Taylor and Alex Shvartsman was all carefully included in that article for their E-MAIL where it was quoted. How can you be less honest than the article you posted?
And tell me it's not your fault that you didn't know who e-mailed you and who wrote it. (In law, that's the Hitler defense, dude.)
A note saying you've removed the articles isn't going to wash, because it doesn't assure me that you won't ever do it again. The only reason I e-mailed a bunch of other people (and why a friend offered to e-mail the UK Newsgroup) is because I want them to know that what you were doing was extremely dishonest and I wanted someone to tell me who was doing it.
Again, this e-mail of yours is far from enough.
If your intentions are truly pure and all this was just a lapse of judgment, I believe:
1) You should apologize. Publicly. On your own site, and maybe on mine, too.
2) You should extend the compensation you give your paid writers to me for those articles you posted without my name.
It's not really your posting of the articles that ticks me off. Those articles have been on the Net for over two years and have been posted on several websites aside from Beyond Dominia. I've just been happy to get thanks from people who read them. You can post them so long as you credit me and Beyond Dominia; I'd even be happy to have helped your site. It's not even difficult to give credit where it's due.
To the people reading this, I hope you take action if ever it happens again, to anyone. Everyone complains about cheating in Pro Tours? Don't you think taking articles from sites that are already free is even more ridiculous?
Hope to hear from you again, Simeon.
Rakso
rakso@bdominia.com
rakso on #BDChat on Newnet
Manila, Philippines
Type I, Extended and Casual Maintainer, Beyond Dominia (
http://www.bdominia.com/discus/messages/9/9.shtml)
Featured writer, Star City Games (
http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/archive.php?Article=Oscar Tan)
Proud member of the Casual Player's Alliance (
http://www.casualplayers.org)
----- Original Message -----
From: Simeon Jones
To: Oscar Tan
Cc: Beyond Dominia e-group ;
jokulgoblin@yahoogroups.com ;
meridianmagic@egroups.com ; Star City e-group
Sent: Sunday, September 30, 2001 5:38 AM
Subject: RE: A British site is ripping off my articles
Oscar, This information was received by me in an email after I joined an egroup on yahoo, which is by definition a public domain source, akin to a newsgroup.
These emails had no details of copyright or other information on them, and from their source I assumed that they were for public consumption.
The only change of formatting that was carried out on the articles was to comply with our site's look and feel.
I enclose a copy of the email that I received, along with the headers.
If you are claiming copyright on these articles then I suggest that you track down the original feed and have this discussion with them.
I will remove them from my site, but I would have suggested that a direct approach to the site you had a problem with would been a better bet than a splurge across multiple other unconnected site..
This email looks like many others I receive offering material for publication and I thought nothing more of it at the time.
As for comments such as "Oh... and if anyone decides not to buy anything from this site, I'd like to thank you in advance and assure you that you are accumulating good karma. "
The site in question is
http://www.britishcollectiblecards.com
As can be seen from our Public Eye feedback, we have a customer satisfaction rate of over 90%, and will happly process international orders.
I believe that the bad karma of the potentially damaging comments have now been cancelled out by the good karma of an ad.
I actively pursue anyone breaching the copyright of any articles published on my site, or any other sites I see doing this practice, as some of the sites you have forward this information onto can testify to first hand.
I enclose a copy of the email I received from Yahoo
If you read it, you will see that it looks pretty "public domain".
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File - T1 Mill -- Goblin Burn FAQ.rtf
Simeon Jones
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) and take a four-year vacation around the world with the winnings.