Re: Image legality: you've got to be kidding !!??

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: Mddeming-at-aol-dot-com 

Hi Scott, All,


In a message dated 3/6/04 10:28:34 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
tesla-at-pupman-dot-com writes:
Original poster: "Scott Hanson" <huil888-at-surfside-dot-net>

Chris -

You absolutely HAVE TO BE KIDDING!!??

Such righteous indignation about "intellectual and professional ethics"??
"Plagiarism"?  Please give us a break!

(People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones ....)

Do you have evidence of criminal wrongdoing by the Geek Group, or is this 
just libelous lip-flap?


"Bucket capacitors" in many forms and permutations were developed by many
experimenters years before you first pressed your tongue against a 9 volt
battery. Salt water filled, aluminum-foil lined, wine-bottle clustered,
bucket-within-a-bucket, etc, etc were all done by others long ago.

Just because the Geek Group site specifies the use of Corona beer bottles
add no new technology, breaks no new ground, provides no improvement over
past implementations, or introduces anything at all of value: its all been
done before.

The IDEA of a bucket capacitor is not at issue here. It's the unauthorized 
copying of illustrations from one WEBSITE to another and editing out the 
credits that is improper activity.

Reading Kreso Bukvik's posts to the TCML over the past few months, it's
obvious he's a young experimenter who has developed a strong interest in
Tesla coils, and is doing his best to learn the technology and make sparks.
Despite the language barrier, he obviously reads and understands what's
being discussed in this forum, and is trying his best to scrape together
materials to build coils under rather difficult conditions in his native
Croatia.


Given Nikola Tesla's Croatian origins, I'd think you'd be bending
over backwards to assist him rather than pompously threatening some
"international litigation".

Geographical accident of birth does not confer an exemption from proper 
procedures.

As far as I can tell, the ideas, concepts, materials, implementations,
configurations, test data, etc, etc, discussed on this list are all provided
freely for the free, universal, unencumbered benefit of all.

There is one HE** of a difference between using information that is posted 
to TCML for general dissemination, and copying illustrations from a 
copyrighted website

If you have developed something so new, so revolutionary, so far beyond the
current state-of-the-art, then patent it and freely pursue "plagiarists" and
others who seek to infringe your intellectual property.

Otherwise .....
Scott Hanson

The Geek Group website IS copyrighted. Therefore, any copying without 
permission or appropriate credits IS already a legal violation, especially 
where pictures are cropped to eliminate source identification. It MAY be 
just a case of ignorance of proper protocol and professional behavior, and 
from the response, I would have to say that the owner of the site in 
question is not the only one ignorant of (or indifferent to) these 
distinctions and proper procedures for presenting work from other web sites.

     As more and more people put Tesla Coil related info on their websites, 
perhaps this is a good time to review the protocols for copying/using 
information (text or graphics)

Matt D.