Back

After a brief sojourn, I’m back. While there are still some protection arrangements to be made, my images will remain offline. It is inevitable that sooner or later content posted to the web will be stolen. Following good advice, though, doesn’t always work. The good advice in this instance relied on the thief being prepared to do the decent thing. However, the people over at b3ta are not interested in doing the decent thing. This place is a hotbed of intellectual property theft. Indeed, copyright theft and subsequent derivatives seems to be the order of the day. And if you have the stamina, the message boards are nothing more than the puerile ramblings of retarded minds with nothing better to do that deface other peoples’ work and laugh about cock jokes. Wit? Half right.

So, the usual route didn’t work. Indeed, it made matters worse. I’ve neither the funds nor the inclination to pursue a legal route. I satisfied myself with a couple of switcheroos and will set about protecting my images from further theft.

An ironic footnote to this story is that of Joel Veitch. Rob Manuel complains that Joel’s work has been ripped off by Coca Cola. At first glance it does appear that he is right, Coca Cola has, indeed, stolen his intellectual property. Normally, I would be sympathetic. That is, I would if Rob and Joel were not members of b3ta.com and Rob is a co-founder. Now, ain’t that poetic justice? It seems that for Rob and Joel, copyright is  something that applies to them and not other people. Other peoples’ copyright is treated with disdain on the board they inhabit and founded. Maybe they should clean up their own back yard before crying foul. 

Update: Following correspondence with Rob, I received an email from one of his co-founders; Denise Wilton. She apologised for the behaviour of the members concerned and has removed the offending posts. For which, many thanks to both. My faith in human nature is on its way to being restored and I am more than happy to apologise for my terse remarks above.

Interestingly, Denise mentioned in her email that some originators of source material used on b3ta are either offended or flattered. Having had my motorcycling articles “borrowed” in the past, why was I not in the flattered camp this time? Well, in previous examples of such lifting of my materials, the people concerned asked first and attributed all such work to me as the original author – none made any attempt to pass off the work as their own and none defaced it.