Unfortunately, due to a completely erroneous and false claim from a private individual that I have breached copyright, or as the writer herself put it, committed "copyright theft" by supposedly using images from her website, I have decided to delete all posts on my blog. I have been employed in the museum and heritage management and interpretation field for almost twenty years and as such am well informed on the issue of copyright laws. The images referred to in the claim was taken during WWI. As I pointed out to the writer herself:
1: The images she referred to were provided by a private individual, and were NOT taken from her website. Many historic photos were printed in multiple quantities, and apparently these are typical examples;
2: The writer/website owner was not the actual photographer, therefore did NOT own copyright of the images in question;
3: Under Australian copyright laws, any copyright restrictions for photographs taken prior to 1955, including the images in question, and most others used on my blog, were in the public domain, and were not restricted in any way by copyright laws. Those that were still subject to copyright were taken by either my grandfather, father, myself or other immediate family members, all of which I had appropriate permissions to use.
4: I referred the writer to the following information sheet from the Australian Copyright Council, suggesting that she read up on the appropriate information before she levels such potentially liabelous claims.
http://www.copyright.org.au/admin/cms-acc1/_images/9381523284d549deb0924a.pdf
To my regular blog readers and followers, please accept my apologies, but, unfortunately, the effort required to maintain the blog is too much to also have to tolerate the offensive nature of these aspersions based on misinformation and a complete and utter lack of understanding about Australian copyright laws. Sadly, the sharing of our local history must suffer as a result.
For more information and to read the writer's claims, please see the comments section of this blog.
http://www.blogger.com/comment-published.g?blogID=7065271097449573570
