|
|
 |
| The Hall of Shame |
Sadly, there are people out there who believe that they can take others' work and claim it as their own,
or even profit from it... Anyone wishing to copy or mirror the Smilies Unlimited website is welcome to
look at the copyright page, and then contact
pastmaster@iol.cz for permission to do so, but there are
unfortunately those who seem to think only of themselves...
In late 1999, Blue Chip Internet Ltd. of Leeds, UK, attempted to copy and copyright the Smilies
Unlimited website. On the basis of legal advice, PastMaster and Parscom took the view that this was a
failure to acknowledge both authorship of the material copied (plagiarism) and the original copyright,
and an attempt to make financial gain on the basis of material being fraudulently passed off as Blue
Chip's own. Moreover, Blue Chip Internet Ltd.'s claims to copyright were detrimental to our own
reputations, implying that the "Smilies Unlimited" Internet pages are not original. Blue Chip
Internet Ltd removed its copies of the Smilies Unlimited site within 24 hours of our contacting them
and their Internet service provider, thereby clearly accepting our charges as to the unethical,
irresponsible and prima facie illegal nature of its own use of this material. Both PastMaster
and Parscom suffered financially from the need to take legal advice over this matter, and we still
await compensation. We encourage all users to boycott this firm.
In May 2000, PastMaster found that one Assad Rizvi had copied parts of the Smilies Unlimited
website onto his own homepage at Geocities. The material was removed amicably after a short
correspondence.
|
|
|
|
Home
