I set up Real Guns as a way to convey more or less positive firearms information, without the influence of: advertising, anti-gun pressure or the need to attract an audience. Anyone who feels there is value to the site’s contents are free to read the material. Anyone who thinks the information may be helpful to others is free to set up a link to the site. There are a couple of uses of my information I do not support; the movement of articles or original data to other sites without permission and without Real Guns identifying information, and sites framing the Real Guns pages in a way that makes Real Guns material seem to be a part of another site. I would like to retain control of my material, I want to know how it is used and I want to be able to monitor interest in specific topics – I can’t do this when material moves from the site.
very recently, a site in Denmark that features a major US firearm company, took material from my site, stripped out the Real Guns information and represented the material as their own in the promotion of this US brand. This site contained pictures of my personal firearms, Real Guns articles and images and handload data – complete with my tables and graphics – the only information that had been carefully removed were the Real Guns trademark and copyright information and identifying marks.
I looked up the site registration and politely contacted the operator; no response. I politely contacted the hosting service; “Can’t get involved”. I politely contacted the bandwidth provider to the hosting service; “Not interested, too busy”. I contacted the Scandinavian representative for Internet Trademark/Copyright infringement resolution, who ignored his role as a member of this International committee, and told be to hire an attorney. Not a single one of these contacts would even look into the situation, or even come back and ask a single question for clarification. I was angry that a person associated with firearms would have so little regard for another’s personal property. I was also angry that the rest of the world can rely on the U.S. DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) legislation to assure expedited handling of such issues by virtually every U.S. operation on the Internet, but there were no reciprocal provisions residing within other countries. I closed access to the Real Guns site to anyone accessing from Denmark, and put up a redirect page that basically explained to anyone attempting to connect, why the site was not available to them.
Is there an upside to all of this? Fortunately, yes. I was contacted by a IPSC enthusiast in Demark who noticed the blocked access, and asked about the situation. I explained and, shortly afterward, I received an e-mail from the operator of the problem site advising that he had removed the Real Guns material, and apologized for using it without permission. He had received a phone call from the gentleman who had contacted me about access. I don’t want to note the site name, because the problem was corrected. I don’t want to mention the name of the person who solved the problem, because gun owners don’t always like to draw public attention to themselves these days. I guess I can say, “Thank you Dan”. These days people rarely get involved in anything, much less something as convoluted as copyright gripes, and one person was able to resolve what three bureaucracies could not.
In reference to my foreign country grumble, the solution came from someone in Denmark. Since that time I’ve identified the Google image.google.com site that is busy indexing and offering my Real Guns site graphics to their customers with the lame disclaimer “some of these images may be copyrighted, which is very close to the Lycos members site that framed my pages and inserted an ad click counter; both are US based and ignoring the DMCA provisions. There is no geographic relevance when it comes to black and white hats.
Thanks
Joe
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