The e-mail reproduced below was written in response to the wholesale copying of images from Michael Kustermann's website. Michael asked for the help of plate collectors on the plate collecting listserv. This was my considered response: -------------------------------------- Dear Michael and other license plate collectors, This is an open letter in response to the e-mail posted on this listserv regarding the alleged Internet piracy of copyrighted images. Based on Michael and Ralph's serious allegations of "theft", I decided to look at the webpage in question, and it seems pretty clear that the owner of the site (variously referred to as "John" and "Buddy") has lifted several dozen images from other pages on the web. In addition, it also seems clear that John/Buddy has illegal violated the copyright of a published work by scanning whole pages from the book and placing them on the web without permission. As I made clear in my e-mail to John/Buddy asking him to rethink his failure to credit the creators of the images in question (see letter to John/Buddy below), I think his breach of copyright and the copying of Michael's and Ralph's images is just plain wrong. It violates the principles of decency and trust that most members of the license plate collecting community pride themselves on. I cannot unequivocally condemn John/Buddy, however. The Internet has opened up stunning new vistas in the exchange of information between people. It is now possible, for the cost of a local phone call, to communicate with people around the world. A simple key word search using any of the major search engines (i.e. Altavista, Lycos, etc.) reveals the stunning breadth of information available. Old notions of intellectual ownership are, by necessity, thrown into doubt by this epochal new technology. Traditionally, publishing has been restricted to the privileged few who could either convince a large company to print their work or someone wealthy enough to buy a printing press. Those days are gone forever. With a modicum of work, or money, anybody in most industrialized countries can now put their thoughts and beliefs on the Internet for the whole world to see. Further, these net publishers need not fear the demands of the bottom line; even if their page only receives 15 hits per year it hardly matters to whether or not that page remains available on the Internet. All that is required is a bit of ingenuity and a webpage can exist in perpetuity. The ease of use which has democratized information transfer has also made it awfully easy to take other people's work and pass it off as your own. While such a practice is disturbing to corporate entities who need to make a profit to survive, it is merely a bruise to the ego of the creators of personal pages. Web page authors need to ask themselves why they created their pages in the first place. Was it to promote an interest of theirs in the hope that others would similarly be interested? Was it to disseminate information for the benefit of curious people? Or was it instead an effort at self-promotion and self-gratification? In the Jewish tradition kinds of charitable giving are ranked. The lowest level of charity is when the giver knows the recipient and the recipient knows the giver. The highest, most noble, type of giving is when neither the giver nor the recipient know each other. This is often a difficult goal to aspire to. Myself a creator of a license plate collecting page, I know that when people copy in toto my list of links and place them on their page as their own, I am bothered. These are my links, I think, I'm the one who spent countless hours to collect and order these links. Eventually though I return to why I created my list of links: to make it easier for plate collectors and potential plate collectors to find the tags they want. If that is my goal, I should be pleased to be casting my net a little wider by having the links appear on the pages of others. Would it be nice if web authors always gave credit where credit was due? Yeah, but we live in reality. My feeling is that if my "stolen" links help others and the recipients never knew that I was the one to unearth that link, than so be it. Same with the images I've scanned in. Michael, your page is a tremendous resource to the license plate collecting community. I hope you reconsider your decision to block access to your pages. If you do not, I will abide by your decision without further comment. I would simply add in closing that by depriving us of the "License Plates of the World" to hurt John/Buddy, you are only hurting the people, the young kids who see a plate on your page and their eyes light up, with a true interest in collecting plates. Most sincerely, Josh Friedman ALPCA #7447 or Attachment: Copy of e-mail to John/Buddy: >john, > >as i'm sure you've been made aware, your webpage is a violation of copyright laws since it infringes upon the asserted ownership right of a book publisher. in addition, you have directly copied images from at least two other license plate collecting pages. while it is sometimes asserted that images appearing on the internet are in the public domain, you have been notified that these particular images are not. > >the license plate collecting community is one based on trust and collegiality without which the hobby would be nothing more than an annoying exercise in greed. it is disappointing that you have chosen not to credit the people who spent many hours preparing and producing the images on your page. i urge you to either remove the images in question or immediately credit the creators of these images. > >what you have done may not be illegal, but it is certainly mean-spirited and wrong. please take a moment to recognize the web authors who spent many hours creating the images you now employ to your benefit. > >thank you for your time.