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Re: Back to the Templars!

Rory,

>Just had a look at the "unattributed" portions of the Web-Site suggested by
>Jerry Gibbons.
> I guess it is a compliment that someone likes your material so much that
>he/she enjoys the thought of further boradcasting it and indeed, for folks
>like us who are interested in the story, it is a compliment that our take on
>it is being put out there by others.

And that is pretty much how I view it.

>But I have to say that it would have been even more of a compliment had the
>owners of  "jolly roger...etc" respected the author as much as the material
>itself and had asked first .
>
>Ah, John, is there no bottom?

Well, in this case, quite possibly it was just haste.  You'll notice that
on the same page they do attribute Richard Huseth, probably because his 
address was visible on the original web page.  Although one would have
thought that dropping a note to those who produced the original material
would have been fairly easy.  There are plenty of other examples in their
pages of text and graphics lifted from web pages with and without attribution,
including I think some from Laurel's pages.

Yet on their front page they do cite *paper* publications.
Interesting double standard.

I think it's a fascinating how on the one hand the web and mail have
made it possible for everyone to publish information, yet on the other
hand some of the more basic rules of scholarship have not gotten
propagated along with that new ability; the more obvious ones being
attribution of sources and marking quotations.

These things used to be instilled by professors and publishers.
How can they be taught in a publishing culture that does not have
those watchdogs?  That's the even more fascinating question.
Perhaps by reviewers; for example whoever put together those
web pages did put on some of them a request for feedback.

 Paraphrasing the crusade historian William of Tyre, "Accepting that
 'mistakes tend to creep into lengthy communications' [Prov 10:19],
 we invite our reader to correct errors in the spirit of kindness."
 - CC LXIII, p 101.

But to whom?  There's no link or address.

Even the above quotation seems to have been lifted from elsewhere, namely
 http://www.people.wcslc.edu/faculty/m-markow/sscle/ssclebib.html

The domain registration record for skullandcrossbones.com
doesn't have a contact electronic mail address, either:

Registrant:
ABARIS TRADING (SKULLANDCROSSBONES3-DOM)
   711 S. Carson St.
   CARSON CITY, NV 89701
   US

   Domain Name: SKULLANDCROSSBONES.ORG

   Administrative Contact, Technical Contact, Billing Contact:
      ABARIS TRADING  (AT1041-ORG)  no.valid.email@worldnic.net
      ABARIS TRADING
      711 S. Carson St.
      CARSON CITY, NV 89701
      US
      415 388 5885 fax: 123 123 1234

Plus, if you look on their links page, they include this quotation:

 "It is the common fate of the indolent to see their
 rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon
 which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance;
 which condition if he break, servitude is at once the
 consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt."
 -- John Philpot Curran: Speech upon the Right of Election, 1790. 

While eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, nonetheless
in the context of a set of Jolly Roger web pages this seems
very like a warning that they are web pages composed of pirated
material.  And the very last link is to a page saying how to form
a Nevada corporation, which seems rather like advertising that the
whole thing has been deliberately set up as an anonymous blind.

Somebody has gone to quite some trouble to construct those web
pages from numerous sources and to weave them into a more or
less coherent whole while hiding who did it and how to reach them.

I wouldn't be surprised if whoever it is is reading this list.
Anybody want to 'fess up?

>Rory
>
>ps I have not trimmed the message as others might like to see this smoking
>gun.

But they can, Rory.  Not only did they just see it in the same list only
a few hours before; also everyone can see every old message to the list in
the archives:

 http://sinclair.quarterman.org/sinclair/archive/

John S. Quarterman <jsq@quarterman.org>
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