I got a nice e-mail from Woodsmith this afternoon. Seems they thought their readers might like it if they published a how-to article on my sawhorses. I thought that was flattering...
The e-mail ended with "Thank you for your interest in Woodsmith Magazine." and some contact information.
That didn't ring quite true, since I've never been a Woodsmith or ShopNotes subscriber/reader, and since I haven't ever contacted them.
They're right here in Des Moines, so I picked up the phone and gave 'em a call. Turns out they received an e-mail "tip" about 1:30 this afternoon.
After a bit of prompting I learned that they expected that the sawhorse design would become their (exclusive) property. I said that they were welcome to publish the design without paying me if they acknowledged where it came from, but that I wasn't willing to give up any rights.
I have no woodworking "presence" anywhere but here on the wreck, and the stuff I put on my projects pages is there because I enjoy sharing ideas and stimulating thought - and because I smile every time I see someone return to a page they've already visited (I really do!)
It's a bit of an ego trip to see that happen from all over the world (and there are times when I really do need an ego boost).
So, to whoever offered that bit of flattery, I'd like to say Thank you, that once was enough - and I'd like to ask that it not be repeated.
Mo (can I call you, Mo?), I get the same feeling out of my drum tuning site. I put the information out on the web because I think it should be free. I get a kick out of that, and helping people with info that can be struggling for beginners.
I get emails from all over the world and it really does show you how the internet has shrunk the earth.
skilled workers are in short supply, I get unsolicited offers via e-mail, the post, or sometimes even by phone from firms I have never dealt with, or sometimes never heard of. They will never say how they got my details, just that "it was a tip from a friend." I always tell them that I'm quite happily employed, but as a favour, I do know some people that might like to talk to them. The first number I give them is the office of the Anti Corruption Commission. The second is the Taxation Dept. I did have one idiot that rang back and said he must have written down the numbers wrongly and could I give them to him again!
I gathered from one of the bottom feeders, whose brain I managed to pick, that if you are on their books, they will also pay/give rewards for information you give them on other people.
It happens several times a month when things are really starting to take off. Very annoying and unwanted.
I am sitting here looking at the check from August Home Publishing, the WoodSmith and ShopNotes parent company.
I sent them a 2 sentence e-mail with a picture attached. The picture showed a 12" Bessy Revo clamp. The clamp is simply marking a location on my rip fence front bar. The clamp servers the purpose of indexing the location of the fence so I can return the fence EXACTLY to the same spot.
I'd wonder if instead the "tip" wasn't auto-generated either manually or by a mining 'bot rather than an unknown admirer manually sending in your info...
Happens more than you can imagine. I've had entire websites copied word for word and running under a different company name in India.
I've also noticed my words on e-woodshop.net website parroted elsewhere, word for word ... which is not a big deal considering the content.
On another website, I wrote the following copyrighted "History" in 1996, which is still being used to this day:
formatting link
year or so ago I saw it printed, word for word, and with NO credits, in a local magazine!
When I called to thank them for being so nice as to use my intellectual property without my permission, the twenty something "editor" admitted taking it from the link below and stated that since there were no credits there, "she didn't consider it a big deal":
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folks never got my permission either, although they do link back to the home page of the original site ... go figure.
Still, thought it is just words it would be niced to be credited, but damn there is little ethical behavior these day!
You were fortunate that you were able to put a stop to it. Clearly copyright notices mean little.
I don't think there was any dishonesty involved in this case, since August Home contacted /me/. More likely someone intended a favor, without understanding that I would have to take down the web page.
I think I see the problem. You put an @ instead of the little C in a circle! It should be KarlC=A9 ;)
Copyright notices, like patents, have to be defended. Not everyone is scared off by a little symbol.
If it still stokes you, work up a cease and desist letter, with a lot of legal terminology and threatening "vigorous pursuit of damages and punitive awards" and include a bogus law firm in the CC: section at the end. For example: W. Lloyd Hastings, IV, Esq. or J. Abraham Saperstein, Goldstein & Goldstein, Inc.
If all you're asking for is an attribution and a link to your original work, a single letter should suffice.
I used to write for the specialty coffee industry. My stuff (and the magazines) was stolen all the time. I went into a new coffee shop to review it and I found several articles blown up and posted on the wall poster sized. I went over to read them and discovered they were my articles! He took my name off and put his name on them.
I asked if he knew who wrote the articles. He said he did. I told him I did and I was upset and was going to contact themagazines and let them know. Nobody would have cared he he attributed to the proper source.
But he got angry and called the cops on me. They were right down the street and were there right away. I explained to them the situation and they said there was nothing they could do, but I had to leave because "I was causing a disturbance".
I contacted the magazine and they called their lawyer. A week later, all the plagarized material disappeared from their walls. Good thing too. I was upset enough to picket the place. Imagine, calling the cops on the victim of intellectual theft. Many folks are natural born thieves and see nothing wrong with it.
Close. Pirated HTML files are being delivered to client machines with the and tags redirected to their (illegal) copies, so the requests for the HTML file and the graphics files aren't presented to /my/ server.
However, all of my HTML files are hand-coded with tags specifying the full URL of one or another of my favicon.ico files, and their (clumsy/buggy?) page-stealing software didn't change /that/ URL - so the only request my server sees and logs is for the favicon.ico file.
[ For non-geeks, the favicon.ico file is the tiny graphic file that's used as a visual identifier by browsers. For the DeSoto Solar web pages it's a yellow sun on a black background. Other areas of my domain use different images, but they all have the same filename. ]
Beside the visible site copyright notice (see the page at my sig link), most of my web pages have a copyright notice displayed somewhere on the page, and all of my web pages contains one of these:
Which displays my copyright notice if you right click on a web page and select properties/page info.
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