On Thursday 1st July I received, by e-mail, four photos of CTB 2500, courtesy of Network Shuttle. These photos were uploaded to my site late Thursday evening, and one was added to the 'Home' page of my Yahoo Group.

On Saturday morning, I received an e-mail from the owner of a well-known UK website that sells Hong Kong buses, which asked me to remove the photo from the Yahoo Group, as it was licensed to HKB Colour Library. This I did immediately, but at the same I e-mailed Network Shuttle to verify that the photos sent to me were taken by them. A pleasant trip to London followed. Upon returning home, I received an e-mail from Network Shuttle confirming the photos were taken by him. I subsequently reposted a photo of 2500, albeit a different one, onto the 'Home' page of my Yahoo Group. A subsequent e-mail was sent to the UK webmaster suggesting that he also checked his source. Sunday was a very busy day, having been called in to work at 1030, and not returning home until after 2200hrs. Upon opening my Inbox, there were several messages from the Webmaster concerned, one of which contained the following, "I have asked you to remove the photos and yet you have now chosen to post date an article on your main site reproducing the photos we have asked you to remove. In light of your continued insistence upon flouting our copyright, .....".

The posting on the Yahoo Group was to seek evidence that I had not post-dated the photos, and once I had received this feedback, together with several e-mails as well, one of which reads "Google cached the news page on the 2 July, so a record exists of what it looked like then", I sought an apology from the Webmaster. The response was pretty much as expected!, part of which reads "Thank you for confirming when and for how long the photos have been on your site, I hadn't expected you to go to such lengths. If I was a bitter man, I would be taking this evidence to the correct authorities and having your webspace closed down, ....."

In the meantime, I have decided to remove the photos pending further enquiries, although I have received further confirmation from my original source that the photos are his!  The case continues!!

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This page last updated Tuesday, 6h July 2004

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