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Archiver > GEN-MEDIEVAL > 2002-01 > 1012240317


From:
Subject: Re: U.S. Copyright Law (was: several related threads with diffeent titles)
Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2002 12:51:57 EST





In a message dated 1/27/02 3:48:53 PM, writes:

<< It was the second of those two postings (under the silly title of "The Two
Affricas" which was suggested by the subject line in the message
to which I was responding) which Ken Finton published in the April
1998 issue of "The Plantagenet Connection" without my knowledge or
consent, >>

We have been through this before ... I will repeat it with even more
background just one more time:

Back in October 1998 I did run a small 3-page article of Baldwin's that he
posted on SGM. Two pages were primarily genealogy tables. Since that post
established the fact that these ancient genealogies of the Isle were
conflicting and were likely unreliable in their original forms, I thought it
would be an appropriate filler subject for the journal -- in case anyone was
working on this and did not know how to treat the material. I asked Stewart
Baldwin's permission -- in an e-mail -- to use it. His e-mail address at that
time was not the same as today, as he got his mail at
,mci.net -- and this was the address where I sent the
request.

Stewart says he never got the message. I do not doubt that -- as I give
contributors copies of the issue they have material in and Mr. Baldwin's
mailing address does not appear in the 1998 mailing database with the other
contributors for that issue that did receive free copies of that issue and
were on this forum at the time -- Todd A. Farmerie. Christian Settipani, Leo
van de Pas, Andrew Breeze, John Parsons, Chris Bennett, and George Beech were
all contributors and received issues.

That issue contained two roundtable discussions for which I needed
permissions as well from a number of scholars not on this forum --"The
Conversion of Clovis the Pagan" and "A Question of Continuity." At that time,
the journal was more focused on historical background information than the
examinations of pedigrees. The primary featured article for that issue was
"Mathilda and the Abbey of La Chaise-Dieu" -- a wonderful article by
Professor George Beech (who used to edit and publish a well-known
prosopographical journal). I remember that I had to spend a great deal of
time on this article, as it was written in a different format that was garble
on my machine and the reconstruction took a month of effort and a final proof
that had to be mailed to Prof. Beech. It might be noted that this issue also
included John Parson's article on "The Ancestry of Joan of England" and
information from that has recently been quoted on this forum.

But I digress:

The majority of Mr. Baldwin's material was in the form of a genealogical
table that he had composed with fixed fonts. When he first contacted me
about this article, his complaint was that something had shifted in the font
and he thought it was unintelligible in that form. I just took a look at that
table and I still cannot see what could possibly shift that much -- the lines
do 'line up' and it seems quite clear.

At any rate, I apologized to Mr. Baldwin and offered to run a correction on
the table which he complained about, but he would not consent to running a
correction. Now he is saying that "The major editorial change was to change
the font of some of my carefully composed genealogical tables, changing the
spacing, and thereby making the tables nonsensical, and looking so foolish
(with my name attached)." One must also remember that a correction sheet was
offered and refused, so the "damage" to Mr. Baldwin's name from a small shift
in spacing -- if any -- could not be corrected because he did not permit a
correction.

So far as receiving Mr. Baldwin's permission to run the post -- he said he
never sent it -- my assumption is that this is truly the case and it was an
oversight on my part. I base this on the fact that he said he never received
a copy and his home address was not in my database for the mailing of that
issue. I apologized to him for the oversight and offered to run a corrected
piece that met his approval on the subject, but he did refuse to do that.
That was the best I could do under the circumstances.

At this point in time absolutely no one was denying me permission to quote
them. Everyone -- without any exception that I am aware of -- was quite
supportive of my efforts to bring new ideas to print from the vast world of
Internet discussions. Myriads of great scholars -- some of the finest
scholars of our era -- had given me (and still do) permission to edit and
quote them carte blanche. This was before everyone in the world had web pages
and before most people realized that forum archives are a good source of
up-to-date new material. Keeping up with these materials can become quite
overwhelming and I saw myself in the role of preserving precious materials
that could easily be overlooked and reporting faithfully on what I found to
be important new data that people like myself would find of great interest.
Did I become careless with this? Probably so. Did I assume that almost
everyone wanted their materials recirculated for the betterment of
scholarship? Absolutely. It did not occur to me that scholars could be petty
and jealous and obstinate. Everyone I knew then were so very kind and so
happy to have their ideas published and circulated. Most average contributors
wanted their questions answered by experts -- and I was able to provide this
service. Everyone I talked to wanted their research out there for others to
use and see. I barely knew Paul Reed or Stewart Baldwin and had never
witnessed a flame out or heard of D. Spencer Hines. Ah, these were the good
old days.

I was to later find that the GenMedieval-L list is a place of severe
contention and burly egos -- quite unlike the other forums I had been in
before. On other forums, the scholars were actually experts in their fields.
On this forum, the PhD's were not for history and related studies, but areas
unrelated to history. The experts were really just armchair amateurs who
wrote for journals without pay and were jealous of one another's expertise.
At best, they belonged to an exclusive genealogical society that controlled
most publishing efforts. A very few made a living looking up genealogies for
people that paid them to do so.

This was very much unlike the academic circles that has welcomed me with open
arms. I was shocked -- I think I am still shocked -- that genealogists can
be so vicious to one another and so competitive about their meager finds.
Most are not even qualified to produce good historical interpretations, as
they specialize in lineage data and can scarcely keep up with the wealth of
background historical information that is the medieval historian's stock in
trade. Again I digress:

Stewart Baldwin, in the same article that he refers to above, said: "Since
every genealogical table of the kings Man and the Isles which I have seen has
significant omissions, I decided to work one out, based on the primary
sources (or, more accurately, the translations thereof) to which I currently
have access. There could very well be errors and omissions, and I would be
grateful for any which are pointed out, particularly if primary sources are
offered."

I assumed that he wanted this material out there for the larger world to see.
Since my journal went to so many scholars that might actually have input on
this subject, it never occurred to me that he might not want me to print it.
As I said, I asked for permission by e-mail and I likely assumed that he had
returned permission like everyone else did. I gave the matter little thought
and it fell into the cracks because I was interested in the major articles of
greater interest. This is not an excuse, but a fact ... and I already
apologized for it.

Later, I began sending proofs by PDF files, but four years ago not everyone
knew what these files were and sending proofs as attachments to scholars was
a difficult task without cross platform programs. Much time was spent in
those days getting the garble-do-gook out of articles that come from cross
platform inconsistencies. It is still a problem today, as certain folk who
use Word Perfect cannot send files that open up in MS Word without additional
translators.

-Ken

Kenneth Harper Finton
Editor and Publisher
THE PLANTAGENET CONNECTION
__________________________________________
HT Communications / PO Box 1401 / Arvada CO 80001
VOICE: 303-420-4888 FAX: 303-420-4845
<A HREF="http://htcommunications.org/homepage.html">;
http://htcommunications.org/homepage.html</A>;


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