[Bell Historians] Response from Dr. Mike Baron to recent 'List' emails re Eastry 'Sanctus' Bell.

[John Camp]

At 16:20 on 27 July 2007, michael baron wrote:
> THE FIRST, NECESSARILY LONG, EMAIL COMMUNICATION FROM A NEWISH MEMBER
> OF THE BELL HISTORIANS COMMUNITY

> What rot! You can see George Dawson, David Cawley, John Eisel, Dr.
> Ketteringham, and other authors of 'Church Bells of County X ' books
> putting all their lifetimes' work on the Web for free, can't you ? I
> don't think so!

Since Dr Baron has used the list to attempt to justify his actions, I
hope it will cause no embarrassment to pursue the topic here.

My good friend Paul Barber was entirely happy for the whole of his
learned article on peculiars (which was the fruit of considerable
research) to be published on the web, with a link from this list.
Information which has been obtained with effort is frequently shared on
the list. Many people spend time and their own money restoring - even
installing - bells and carrying out repairs. I write my weekly column
for the 'RW' without expectation of payment. These are the sort of
things people do in pursuit of a fascinating hobby.  Nobody wants to
make money out of it.

Dr B:
> he has decreased the number of potential customers of my intended book
> amongst the Bell Historian fraternity, the very people most likely to
> have bought it!

I'm inclined to repeat Dr Baron's 'What rot!'. How much damage does he
think will have been caused to his (not yet written) book by the
reproduction of one drawing? Is that to be equated to the sum total of
his lifetime's work?

As a former copyright lawyer, I do hope, incidentally, that before
talking about infringement of copyright he made sure that he and not the
photographer or calligrapher owns it.

But don't kick him off the list, David (Bryant). Better that he should
be persuaded that membership of a 'community' does not include issuing
overblown threats about infringement of copyright.

John Camp

PS He needs to work a bit on his use of apostrophes, as well, before
publishing anything. But that's a ringing-chat topic.