Re: Expanded Oracle DBA Site

From: Howard J. Rogers <howardjr20002_at_yahoo.com.au>
Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2003 18:48:22 +1000
Message-ID: <UMaka.8801$1s1.158033_at_newsfeeds.bigpond.com>


"Gabriel Gonzalez" <no-spam_at_no-spam.com> wrote in message news:OZmdncapV7mQeQ2jXTWcqQ_at_giganews.com...
> 'd suggest not getting too hot about this. Although what has been said is
> very inflammatory (and even unprofessional), you must take two things into
> account:

I'd take this offline if you had a proper email address, but since you don't...

I'd remind you that my original response to Jeffrey's original publicising of his new site consisted of just two sentences: that it sucked big time that my material was there without authorisation or acknowledgement and in clear breach of copyright; and that I hoped he would remove anything else of mine that he *might* have "pinched".

I don't see what was inflammatory about that, nor "even unprofessional". I carefully, and deliberately, did not use the word "stolen", but the less-inflammatory "pinched". Perhaps I shouldn't have suggested he might have "pinched" something else... but then I don't think I have a duty or responsibility to identify each and every breach of copyright. The onus, rather, is on Jeffrey to check that he isn't breaching copyright *before* hosting the material on his site.

Having failed to do so, he has a duty to remove the material (and has, thankfully, subsequently done so).

>
> 1) Professionalism is not the norm here, so people who are otherwise
> professional adults in real life, behave differently here. I guess it's
> like a defense mechanism, specially lately, Oracle newsgroups have been a
> hellhole of flames, and the noise to signal ratio is very high.
>
> 2) You just took a long time to respond. A couple days went by ans there
> was no word from you. People jumped to conclusions about your motives and
> forgot it could have been an honest mistake.

That one won't wash. This is a 115+ pages of 9i material (ie, fairly recent). There's a copyright notice on the front page in bright purple. There's a copyright notice at the foot of each and every page of the document, in rather more traditional black. There can not be any possible "mistake", honest or otherwise, about whether the thing was copyrighted or not. Obviously it was. The error lay in assuming that I wouldn't mind, or that it was public domain, or something else... not being privvy to Jeffrey's mind, I wouldn't know what the assumption was... but that an assumption was made: of that there can be no doubt.

If it is 'unprofessional' or 'inflammatory' to defend one's intellectual property, then Guilty as Charged. But I find the reasoning on your part puzzling, to say the least.

>
> So don't take it so seriously. You did the right thing.

You mean, apart from the wrong thing of breaching copyright?

Regards
HJR Received on Mon Apr 07 2003 - 10:48:22 CEST

Original text of this message