We have received an avalanche of emails in a matter of two hours.
----- Original Message -----
From: Richard J Green <rjg@world.std.com>
Sent: Monday, March 19, 2001 8:04 PM
Subject: copyright infringement
To whom it may concern,
The page, http://aaargh.vho.org/engl/opponents/greenblue.html, is my intellectual property. By hosting this page, you are infringing upon my copyright. I am instructing you to remove this page within 5 days.
HALF an hour later
----- Original Message -----
From: John Drobnicki <drobnicki@york.cuny.edu>
Sent: Monday, March 19, 2001 8:33 PM
Subject: Copyright violation
To whom it may concern:
On your web site at
http://aaargh.vho.org/fran/inst/bib/NIZKORlibraries.html
you have reproduced an article written by me on the acquisition of Holocaust-denial materials by libraries. You may not know it, but that article was published in Public & Access Services Quarterly, Vol. 1, No. 1 (1995): 5-40, and is copyrighted by myself and The Haworth Press <http://www.haworthpressinc.com/>. Permission for it to appear on the Nizkor Project server, and ONLY the Nizkor Project server, was granted by me. I have not consented for it to appear on your web site.
By hosting this page, you are infringing upon my copyright. Thus, I am instructing you to remove the file from your server within 5 days. Please
note that I am not concerned with the rest of your site and am in no way trying to censor your expression; I only want my own copyrighted material to be removed. You may feel free to replace the file with a link to Nizkor's authorized version:
http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/bibliographies/biblio.20a
I thank you in advance for your cooperation.
John A. Drobnicki Associate Professor & Head of Reference Services York College, The City University of New York http://www.york.cuny.edu/~drobnick/ "I speak for no one but myself."
TWO hours later:
From: <zimm@ccmail.nevada.edu>
Sent: Monday, March 19, 2001 9:49 PM
Subject: Copyright Violation
I have recently learned that VHO, like aaargh before it, is violating copyright material. You may be aware that aaargh was kicked off of its site for these violations. If VHO does not remove the below cited material, I will file the following complaint with Rietta.
Dear Sir?Ms
It has come to my attention that Rietta is the ISP for the website which has reproduced the following: http://aaargh.vho.org/fran/techniques/bodydisposal.html.
Please be advised that I am the author of this essay and never gave permission to have it reproduced. Therefore, my copyrights have been violated. I am a member of the California bar and unless this material is withdrawn I will file a lawsuit against Rietta. You should also be aware that aaargh was kicked off by its prior host for violating the copyrights of a number of authors, including myself. Other vilations are as follows.
http://aaargh.vho.org/engl/hay/hayindex.html [incl. Hayward's entire thesis]
http://aaargh.vho.org/fran/inst/bib/NIZKORlibraries.html [my thesis] http://aaargh.vho.org/engl/dl/dlindex.html [Dr. Lipstadt's entire book] http://aaargh.vho.org/engl/opponents/greenblue.html [Rich Green's essay] http://aaargh.vho.org/engl/opponents/PVNEichpaper.html [article by Vidal-Naquet]
All of these authors will be filing a class action lawsuit unless the situation is remedied immediately.
Sincerely Yours
John C. Zimmerman
AAARGH REPLIES
First of all, M. Zimmerman is a liar. He is inventing "that aaargh was kicked off of its site for these violation". This is pure nonsense. A company bought a company and the whole domain, of which aaargh was a part has been wiped out by the new owners. There was no explanation, no warning, no demand. We did not bother to ask for reasons. Pure and simple censorship.
Secondly, we do not believe in the existence of "intellectual property". We believe that educated people have to share their views and ideas with the rest of mankind, as ideas are a common property of the human race. "Intellectual property" is a legal concept, which, beyond its intrinsic absurdity, has its role in economy. It is recognized by courts and we know it. But consider how 30 million people have joyfully trampled the so-called intellectual property of musicians in appropriating music with Napster.
Thirdly, we have systematically introduced, on our website, views which are opposed, or highly critical of the views we support. We have conceived this website, more than 4 years ago, as an arena for a very important intellectual debate on several historical and political questions. We believe in the virtue of examination, discussion and comparison. We are rationalists and we believe that we may find common grounds with those whom we perceive and who perceive us as intellectual enemies. This is all the more necessary because we deal with events replete with human sufferings, violent deaths, and all sorts of horrors. Our adversaries are totally unable to follow us in the field of open discussion.
Four, we do not extract any material benefit from this activity as we sell nothing. Displaying a text from one of our adversaries costs us some energy and a small amount of money. There is no way to retrieve this energy and this money which are given away free to readers and people interested in trying to make up their mind about difficult subjects.
Five, we respect authorship and "intellectual property" by always attributing the responsability of texts to authors. We name them, and advise our readers to buy, whenever possible, the texts we display, from publishers and bookshops. We just received M. Zimmerman book and in our "April actualities" we'll advise readers to buy it. But this could escape Mr. Zimmerman who unfortunately cannot read French or German.
Six, there is here an obvious conspiracy. No chance that these messages could be sent independently. It seems Mr Zimmerman wants to build a case and is trying to get support in consorting with colleagues at Nizkor or similar sites, which are dedicated to the struggle against revisionists. These people made a habit, for this purpose, to distort revisionist views which they do not allow on their site. Mr. Zimmerman himself is grossly distorting revisionist views at almost every page of his writings. Our readers will appreciate this absolute lack of intellectuel honesty.
We are requested by Zimmerman and Cy to censor their own writing. We'll gladly comply. We have not found much, in Mr Zimmerman's writings, to be be proud of, and we understand that he wishes to restrain the number of his readers.
Seven, to limit ourselves to the case of Mr. Zimmerman, a Las vegas lawyer, an amateurish historian, a linguistic invalid, who pretends to be the first (!!!) to refute revisionist arguments (he says in his jargon "denier" although we deny nothing, we maintain views different from his), we thought that we could spend some time and energy in entering a discussion with him and elaborating a critique of his writings to which our reader would take part in being able to visualize his contribution and our response to it.
Obviously, this perpective makes Mr. Zimmerman fret a lot. His attitude smacks very much of intellectual cowardice. It is his right to make a fool of himself in showing how frightened he is by the very debate he is conducting in his book for over 400 p.! We are not part of that bigotry.
Let's wipe away Zimmerman and his likes back to their own obscurity.
21 March 2001
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Last modified: October 15, 1999
Copyright © 1999 John Zimmerman. All rights reserved.
Retrieved from
<http://www.holocaust-history.org/auschwitz/body-disposal>
This text has been displayed on the Net, and forwarded to you
as a tool for educational purpose, further research, on a non
commercial and fair use basis, by the International Secretariat
of the Association des Anciens Amateurs de Recits de Guerre et
d'Holocauste (AAARGH). The E-mail of the Secretariat is <aaarghinternational@hotmail.com.
Mail can be sent at PO Box 81475, Chicago, IL 60681-0475, USA..
We see the act of displaying a written document on Internet as
the equivalent to displaying it on the shelves of a public library.
It costs us a modicum of labor and money. The only benefit accrues
to the reader who, we surmise, thinks by himself. A reader looks
for a document on the Web at his or her own risks. As for the
author, there is no reason to suppose that he or she shares any
responsibilty for other writings displayed on this Site. Because
laws enforcing a specific censorship on some historical question
apply in various countries (Germany, France, Israel, Switzerland,
Canada, and others) we do not ask their permission from authors
living in thoses places: they wouldn't have the freedom to consent.
We believe we are protected by the Human Rights Charter: ARTICLE
19. <Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression;
this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference
and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through
any media and regardless of frontiers.>The Universal Declaration
of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly
on December 10, 1948, in Paris.
<http://aaargh-international.org/fran/techniques/bodydisposal.html>