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
