doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com IGC became commercial?

I've found out Internet Gun Club well known for the good list of UK makers became commercial site now and they asking to pay some money for using data base and forum.
What they said about author's rights over there:
"We are keen to acknowledge our sources and are very conscious of infringing the copyright of others; if we have done so, we apologise and will immediately remove/rectify any offending material".
So all information at IGC looks like stolen at the moment and at the same time they ask for the money and to be the part of this strange business.
How d'you feel about that, guys?

I have been a member for a while. I have never paid a penny to use the forum or browse the historical database. There was talk of making the IGC a commercial site a few months back but it was dropped. I don’t know what to say about the supposedly stolen data other than to say it seems from the above that you have a personal axe to grind with the IGC site. Have you taken your points up with the owners before you started your rant on here?

I was a member of the site but hadn’t used it for many months so I was disappointed to find that as from September (I've just checked the site again) a subscription is required as Geno mentions.

Sites cost money & not all are suitably supported by advertising so unfortunately in the end I guess the owners decided it’s a matter of pay or don’t play.

I can’t agree with Geno that the statement on the site regarding acknowledgement of sources, respecting copyright etc means that:

“all the information on the site is stolen at the moment”.

That’s a bit of a huge leap of deduction to say the least!

The majority of the records on the site are just names & dates which have been collated from various sources – you can’t copyright the statement that 'J Smith was in business from 1860 to 1890' (or whatever). In a very small way I’ve contributed some data myself but it would hardly warrant acknowledgement & copyright is nonsense.

You may not want to pay for someone to keep the site plus gather & collate information from many sources (I like free things myself) but to state that the all the information is stolen & that it’s a “strange business” is a bit over the top – especially when information from the site has frequently appeared here (cut & pasted) often without the courtesy of attribution.

Regards
Russell

Russell, I believe there two big differences between information for free and information you have to pay for, when person who gives this information got no copy rights.
In the first case no one could charge you with book you have read and gave several quotations from this book in the Internet.
In second case you'll break the law, as soon as you want to get some money for it.

Geno,
If I create my own website & put on it information which I’ve collected (or been given) I’ve got every right to charge you to access the site even if the information was as free & basic as list of restaurants in a certain town centre. We are fortunate that so much information is available for free on the net (long may it remain so). It’s a fact of life though that some people wish to or have to charge for their internet based resources.

To use another example – Jeffery Boothroyds daughter Susan runs the ‘Firearms Research Service’. She’s a nice lady & using her fathers own material, information she’s been given & a vast library of books she’ll give you a history of a maker or a particular type of gun etc – for a suitable fee.
As the much of the information is actually public domain (which you could find) or from books (which you could buy) is she wrong charge a fee for her time – which has saved you countless hours of your own time? Of course she isn’t. The fact that you’ve paid to get what you’d call ‘free’ information is irrelevant.

Likewise the Internet Gun Club offered the service of convenient access to historical information. If they sometimes stripped passages from books to incorporate in the summary which accompanies the data on some of the makers then that’s naughty & must be what they alluded to regarding “acknowledgement & copyright” (but that must be a fraction of the information on the site). I can understand your disappointment at the end of free access (I certainly share it with you), it’s not in the spirit of the internet but bills have to be paid I guess. We have to remember that its someone else’s site & we are not being forced to look at it. As I wrote before – we can’t really criticise as cut & paste jobs from the site have been frequently displayed on this site.

That aside - at least here we can still swop information in the correct spirit & make use of knowledge whether it comes from St.Annes or St. Petersburg.

Regards
Russell