Okay,I'll take the bait

[Dan Norder]

I see, you are of course entitled to your opinions and delusions based on nothing more than a fractured sense of unreality

I'm sure that the university professors whose communication law classes I took, the authors of the books I have read, and the judges involved in the legal decisions I have followed over the years would be amused that some guy on the Internet is calling all of them delusions.

but the fact remains that we all have to abide by legal requirements of the appointed custodians of historical archives. Why else would Rob Clark in displaying an extract for fair use discussion responsibly state that, "I did take photos myself when I saw the book in April, but signed a form not to publish them".

If he signed a form, that's his own business, but I signed no such form. I cannot be expected to follow any contract that I never agreed to. The page was written in 1888 and is clearly in the public domain with no copyright restrictions by all international laws, and it was important that people see the real image and not just take your false claims about it at face value, so I let people see it.

We are discussing the taking of photographic images of documents, not the documents themselves which are of course a seperate copyright issue.

Copyright covers artistic work. Taking a photo of a two dimensional document is not art, as it's just reproducing an image which is public domain. This legal principle is based upon international copyright laws and has been backed up by several court decisions (the most important of which is Bridgeman v Corel).

And to the best of my knowledge, the image was not one taken by Ivor Edwards in 1997, it was taken in 2006 by someone else and placed on the Internet after I questioned your claims about what the document said.

Either way it's completely irrelevant. The bottom line is that photos exist proving that you are wrong. Your unwillingness to admit that and your attempts to mislead people don't change the facts of the situation.

[auspirograph]

The reason I didn't reproduce any other documents from the London Hospital Archives was out of respect to Jonathan Evans who was very helpful and is a genuinely nice person.

Thanks Rob, understood. That is certainly my position also on this whole business as Mr Evans was most helpful to me with the benefit of his knowledge and experience. Personally, I have no problem in abiding with the reasonable requirements and limits of London Hospital's archival use as it contributes towards the preservation of the documents for all interested researchers. I was quite surprised to hear from Kate Richardson that a great deal of material is still waiting to be catalogued.

[Cap'n Jack]

Hey, Spiro, me old mate, how's the new website chugging along?
You boys creating a storm of words over there or what?

[auspirograph]

Hi there Ap,

Going fine thanks, your grandmother from Brisbane did join up and is now sailing on a tail wind...

[auspirograph]

Well Dan, you can quote all the commercial case law you like, it still doesn't alter the fact that courtesy permission is a given for reasonable people in the wide field of Ripperology, especially in this fair and educational use discussion.

Your irrelevant defensive posturing is a waste of my time and I continue to note that you cannot specify, after two years of asking, the baseless claims regarding at least 12 London Hospital entries, not just the one fixation on Neurosthenia/Neurasthenia which is now settled and on which we can all agree.

[Howard Brown]

Thanks to Rob and Dan for the clarification. I think you two guys can see how someone who has a lot of evidence to counter the notion of RDS even being a suspect would be happy to see "neurasthenia" rather than "neurosthenia".

Onward and upward.....

" I don't think he was the Ripper but a reasonable case can be made for the murder of Mary Ann Nichols close as it is to the London Hospital."-Spiro.

Hi,pal...its me again . You didn't respond to me when I told you that there's no " reasonable case" to be made for RDS killing Nichols over yonder partly because you helped prove there's no reasonable case to suspect him of anything other than soiling bedpans in the LH.... Do so now,por favor. Lets discuss what that case is. Start up a thread for it. Or lets do it over on your site.

Haword.

[auspirograph]

Fine Howard, let's have it your way. I said a case could be made not that I was making a case. Thanks for your interest.

[Dan Norder]

Well Dan, you can quote all the commercial case law you like, it still doesn't alter the fact that courtesy permission is a given for reasonable people in the wide field of Ripperology, especially in this fair and educational use discussion.

You were the one who brought copyright law up in the first place and made extremely ignorant claims about it, and now you suddenly switch your tune and pretend you were arguing something else? You simply are incapable of admitting you are wrong, and you try to cover it up with ridiculous attacks that are equally wrong.

Arguing that "courtesy" demands I not publish things without explicit written permission is also nonsense. Courtesy goes to private individuals with private items that they share with the world. Museums and public archives sole reason for existing is to share the information with the world, not to try to demand restrictions on them. We don't have to ask the National Archives anytime we want to publish a copy of the Dear Boss letter, or any of the police documents. If they suddenly insisted we had to ask them permission first everyone would just ignore them. Items in the public domain are owned by the public. That's the whole point.

The Lusk Letter reproduction and the Mitre Square drawings are also in the London Hospital Museum archives, and nobody asks permission to reprint those. You're inventing up some nonsense requirement that nobody follows and shouldn't have to, and you're trying to use that as some crazy personal attack to deflect the conversation from the real topic:

You made false claims about a document, and were caught doing so. You can't weasel your way out of it by trying to argue that I shouldn't have been allowed to show everyone the document that proves you were wrong.

And here's an incredibly hypocritical statement, as you are accusing me of exactly what you are doing:

Your irrelevant defensive posturing is a waste of my time and I continue to note that you cannot specify, after two years of asking, the baseless claims regarding at least 12 London Hospital entries, not just the one fixation on Neurosthenia/Neurasthenia which is now settled and on which we can all agree.

Actually, way back in 2006 we went over this document piece by piece about your claims (which we could only do because I had posted the photo), and we proved that most of your claims were just outright wrong, and the others looked to be easily excusable as mere mistakes in transcription. Certainly if the person in charge of the hospital archives (or some worker he may have had do it) can accidentally mistranscribe at least two sections of that one single line about Stephenson, Harris could be excused for a couple of minor errors that do not impact his theory at all. Your insistence that he and Edwards intentionally misrepresented what the document says makes no
sense, and it makes even less sense when the only things you even have left as possibly being an error are so trivial.

If you want anyone to believe that the document was intentionally misrepresented, you'll have to provide real evidence of it. So far every claim you've made that is at all relevant has been proven to be incorrect. Refusing to admit your mistakes and launching personal attacks on the people who proved you wrong certainly doesn't give anyone any reason to expect that your other accusations would be any more reliable.

[caz]

Just to clarify my position. It's always been an 'O' to me. When I started the 'London Hospital Archives' thread http://forum.casebook.org/showthread.php?t=589 I mistakenly spelt it with an 'A'. I'm not sure how that happened as I typed the post up in Microsoft Works and had it double checked by a friend and I definitely wrote it with an 'O'. The only reason I can think of how it turned up with an 'A' is that I got a bit trigger happy with the Spell check as Neurasthenia is on the Spell check dictionary and Neurosthenia isn't. Anyway, I spotted my mistake and posted a correction on that thread (post 33).

Rob

Hi Rob,

I tried typing neurosthenia just now and it came out neurasthenia so I had to go back and change the a to an o because on my pc it automatically corrected the spelling for me, as I suspected yours may have done. So I’d be willing to bet that something like this happened in your case.

I find it very annoying when this happens but I guess the advantages of the automatic correction function must outweigh the disadvantages. I just have to proofread everything once again before pressing the ‘submit’ button, in case my pc has decided in its own infinite wisdom to amend something I wanted just as it was when I typed it.

Love,

Caz
X

[Rob Clack]

Hi Caz,

My PC doesn't have an automatic spell checker, so i'll have to blame old age and a quick fire finger .

Love

Rob X

[Monty]

Rob,

Blaming the quick fire finger eh?

I have a similar problem.

Monty

[Rob Clack]

Rob,

Blaming the quick fire finger eh?

I have a similar problem.

Monty

You should see a doctor mate

Rob

[Robert]

Donston had a spellchecker. It told him to use one more eye of newt.

[auspirograph]

You were the one who brought copyright law up in the first place and made extremely ignorant claims about it, and now you suddenly switch your tune and pretend you were arguing something else? You simply are incapable of admitting you are wrong, and you try to cover it up with ridiculous attacks that are equally wrong.

Arguing that "courtesy" demands I not publish things without explicit written permission is also nonsense. Courtesy goes to private individuals with private items that they share with the world. Museums and public archives sole reason for existing is to share the information with the world, not to try to demand restrictions on them. We don't have to ask the National Archives anytime we want to publish a copy of the Dear Boss letter, or any of the police documents. If they suddenly insisted we had to ask them permission first everyone would just ignore them. Items in the public domain are owned by the public. That's the whole point.

The Lusk Letter reproduction and the Mitre Square drawings are also in the London Hospital Museum archives, and nobody asks permission to reprint those. You're inventing up some nonsense requirement that nobody follows and shouldn't have to, and you're trying to use that as some crazy personal attack to deflect the conversation from the real topic:

You made false claims about a document, and were caught doing so. You can't weasel your way out of it by trying to argue that I shouldn't have been allowed to show everyone the document that proves you were wrong.

And here's an incredibly hypocritical statement, as you are accusing me of exactly what you are doing:



Actually, way back in 2006 we went over this document piece by piece about your claims (which we could only do because I had posted the photo), and we proved that most of your claims were just outright wrong, and the others looked to be easily excusable as mere mistakes in transcription. Certainly if the person in charge of the hospital archives (or some worker he may have had do it) can accidentally mistranscribe at least two sections of that one single line about Stephenson, Harris could be excused for a couple of minor errors that do not impact his theory at all. Your insistence that he and Edwards intentionally misrepresented what the document says makes no
sense, and it makes even less sense when the only things you even have left as possibly being an error are so trivial.

If you want anyone to believe that the document was intentionally misrepresented, you'll have to provide real evidence of it. So far every claim you've made that is at all relevant has been proven to be incorrect. Refusing to admit your mistakes and launching personal attacks on the people who proved you wrong certainly doesn't give anyone any reason to expect that your other accusations would be any more reliable.

Thanks for the fulsome reply Dan, can't say that I agree with it though...