Lost Bombers.

[forget]

It seems that the excellent 'Lost Bombers' web has died a death, shortly after its originator. Situation discussed below. Copyright issues ?? It would be a great pity if all that work, 11 years worth apparently, were to disappear.

Board Policy on Lostbombers Information - RafCommands Forums

[Brian Abraham]

forget, just searched for and came up OK here.

[forget]

That's interesting. Nothing in UK, although the site is being maintained.

Domain name: lostbombers.co.uk
Registrant type: UK Individual
Registered on: 01-Dec-2005
Renewal date: 01-Dec-2011
Last updated: 05-Feb-2010

[Load Toad]

Could it not have had an auto udpdate?

I know nothing of the site but...

..on the day I can sell a limerick or 100 word story to the garage or mall in return for their goods - I say copyright has to be respected.

[nacluv]

I can't get to it either.

Lost Bombers was a real help to me a couple of years ago when tracing an ex-RAF family member KIA in 1943.

It would be a real pity if it has gone for good.

[Brian Abraham]

Just tried it again and no success.

[Andy Fletcher]

The copyright issues relate to the fact that the vast majority of the information is taken directly from W.R. Chorley's "Bomber Command Losses" series of books without crediting the original source or author.

Best Regards

Andy Fletcher

[forget]

Andy, You've lost me. Copyright relates to the protection of original and inventive works. I don't know W.R. Chorley's "Bomber Command Losses" series of books but it can only be a compilation of Bomber Command records provided to Chorley by the RAF. I don't see Chorley as the original source or author, he invented nothing.

I'm baffled. Chorley is claiming no less then the exclusive right to compile lists of Bomber Command losses. Make sense? If Chorley has, as you suggest, caused the loss of the web site through a copyright claim then someone needs a 'serious talking to'.

[Opssys]

Why its Gone and Where to Find an Archive

In my professional life I recently had to do some 'forensics' on a lost website. I won't bore you with the details (although it became very interesting to me). But the simple answer was although the Domain remained valid, the Hosting site was no longer being paid, so after attempting to contact their client, they closed his hosting accounts.
End of Website access:
I believe this is what has happened in this case

However this good people at the Wayback Machine have an Archive of Lost Bombers
I have NOT investigated in detail, but whilst I suspect it is incomplete, it appears to have quite a lot of the site. For a sample of what they have Archived see: Lost Bombers 2nd Feb 2008

[Load Toad]

forget,
If you read his comments on the provided link you'll see Mr. Chorley explanation of his issues with the Crown Copyright.

[forget]

Thanks Load Toad, am I looking in the right place, below? I see no 'Mr Chorley' posts. However, reading through the 'opinions' it seems Mr C may have a good case in that his Kew research (a mammoth task) collated the details on which Lost Bombers relied. Still, a great pity if Lost Bombers is - lost.

http://www.rafcommands.com/cgi-bin/d...rum=DCForumID6

PS. Opssys, thanks for the useful info.

[Load Toad]

Sorry I used the wrong name - this was the bit I was referring to:

Jerry, I am afraid you are missing the point. Indeed much material does come from crown copyright sources, BUT there are rules about the use of crown material. One is that ALL sources are credited. Two, that copy of the work is to be deposited with the said crown source or archive.
Also the ops records etc are often wrong and have been corrected after hundreds of hours research by bone fide authors. For someone then to copy this without acknowledgement is immoral. Stealing is another name for it.
Another big issue is that the when somebody quotes from another work as in Lost Bombers case, they are often copying the format. For example all the ops records are available at Kew but they are not available as in the case of my own book, where all the data from all squadrons on the one operation is found in one book. This took me two years to do and all sources and acknowledgements are quoted. AND I have the honesty to put my name to the work. I also answer all enquiries about my work. J W Sharp has not done either of these things, nor has he answered my enquiries about his work or Bill Chorley's for that matter.

Peter

[Opssys]

As someone who is currently 'stepping' very carefully' through the minefield of Copyright, Crown and otherwise, which means a number of projects are stalled (and two have had to be abandoned as fees to high to keep the resulting PDF free and not good enough for me to charge for it), plus having had my Intellectual Property stolen (Software, Articles as well as images) without even attribution and as de facto 'manager/bottle washer in chief' of the Caz Caswell site, where despite Caz being sympathetic to most requests for reuse. subject to attribution, people still just steal the images (despite which he insists they aren't watermarked), I fully understand why a site that uses information/media without permission, or attribution generates such ire.

But in the case of the now deceased owner of the Lost Bombers Website; Wayback Machine only picked it up in 2007 and I am assuming therefore it probably only became 'high profile' around that time, I doubt that a then 70+ person who was totally committed to what he was trying to achieve and had not (until questions were asked) given any thought to Copyright, or I.P issues.

If he had started his site in 10 years earlier he would have not even stood out from the crowd as most early Webmasters worked on the basis that everything was 'free' (as I discovered when sorting out Copyright during my rescue of Britain In Space).

Yes he was in the wrong, yes he didn't respond to requests to get it sorted an, but maybe if I was in my mid-70's I wouldn’t have been too bothered either.

What was the worst that could happen, suing him (probably not) getting his ISP to 'take the site down' (their reaction probably would be prove he is doing wrong in a court of law). If he had been a young 'hot shot Black Hat', the site would just be relocated to Iran (what copyright) or another 'flag of convenience' country.

But from the comments, I think many are sad that it is gone and hopefully someone with the time, will contact his estate, sort out the copyright issues and resurrect it!

But it won’t be me. As I have a project involving a defunct, but even more iconic site which once I get approval to proceed (if ever) will take a year to rebuild assuming everyone who previously gave copyright permission continues to do so (and there are over a 100 different photographers involved)!.

[forget]

Thanks again Load Toad. As someone who relies on IPR I can now see Mr Chorley's point. Is it too much to hope that the Lost Bombers site could be rescued by Mr Chorley and make it his own. A huge amount of work went into it, and the originator was certainly well intentioned. From what I've heard the "Bomber Command Losses" publications, value for money perhaps, are too expensive for the average individual. Perhaps Mr Chorley would see this as an advertising medium for his books. Too much to hope?

Then again, he's generous enough to provide this;

RAF Bomber Command Losses of the Second World War, WR Chorley - Amendments and Additions

[Andy Fletcher]

Forget,

My use of the term copyright was perhaps out of place.

Do you think that using information that someone has spent years compiling and making it publically available without a single acknowledgement acceptable behaviour?

[forget]

No. And I've said so, above.

[Load Toad]

If a 'Lost Bombers' site can be hosted and maintained but with the correct credit, authorization and payment for sure that would be very useful.

[Newforest2]

Site would seem to be functioning now.

Lost Bombers - World War II Lost Bombers

[Load Toad]

And the WHOIS:

Domain name:
lostbombers.co.uk

Registrant:
Helen Patricia Wood

Registrant type:
UK Individual

Registrant's address:
[it's on WHOIS if you are interested]

Registrar:
Webfusion Ltd t/a 123-Reg.co.uk [Tag = 123-REG]
URL: 123-reg | Domain names | Domain name registration

Relevant dates:
Registered on: 01-Dec-2005
Renewal date: 01-Dec-2011
Last updated: 05-Feb-2010

Registration status:
Registered until renewal date.

Name servers:
ns1.cheetah-web.com
ns2.cheetah-web.com

[Opssys]

Obviously Ms Wood has paid the Hosting dues..Now just the Other Issues for her to sort out..