Author Topic: Cease and Desist Notice (FTAO those who run their own outdoors websites)  (Read 9962 times)

harry_keogh

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Well I'm off down to Leicestershire tomorrow to do a new walk that I've devised. I'm going to call it 'Grantham Canal and Belvoir Castle'. Any similarities to other routes are purely coincidental - after all, there are only so many ways to walk down Grantham Canal. If I ever get forced to take my current one down, it's going to be instantly replaced with this one.

ninthace

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Don't forget the "Challenge" suffix!
Solvitur Ambulando

harry_keogh

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Of course.

As an afterthought... even if a route could be copyrighted, we're only talking about the visuals aren't we? After all, his maps tend to be hand drawn illustrations. So if I didn't display the map but instead simply offered a gps file for download - can that be comparible? A gpx file is, after all, simply a list of coordinates. It's something that many people use these days, and something that - so far as I know - he doesn't offer.

ninthace

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GPS file - not the sort of thing you can get from a book!   Sketch maps are not comparable.  All his site offers are pictures of the front cover!
Solvitur Ambulando

harry_keogh

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I noticed that - It's impossible to find out whether he's even done these routes before. Are we supposed to be psychic and know all of his 8700 routes? Maybe we should all be buying all 470 of his guidebooks before writing about a walk, just in case.

vghikers

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You're overthinking it  :)
Only his prose, pictures, map drawings are copyrighted to him (and maybe the title of the walk). You haven't copied any of those, the rest is BS.


harry_keogh

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The copyright will no doubt be for the creative content of his books. The question is... would it be the sketch itself that is copyrighted? His own unique visual representation of the route? Or would it be the route itself. I highly suspect that copyright would be covering the former.

Edit: You got there first.
Pretty sure that titles cannot be copyrighted.

jimbob

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"Witch" challenging walk are you doing near Belvoir?
 :D
Too little, too late, too bad......

tonyk

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 Are you sure these emails have actually come from John Merrill himself? I wonder if the Board of Trustees have decided to tighten things up and use aggressive tactics to increase revenue? It might be worth talking to him on the phone and getting to the bottom of this as he is doing serious damage to his reputation.

 Paul Dawes wrote
Quote
The sad thing is that I have fond memories of the other guys’s books...I bought a reasonable number many years ago, when I first started walking parts of the Peak District.
Same here.The Peakland Way was my first long distance walk in 1982 and I still have the guide book.

April

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Harry, I had noticed your post a few days ago but not had much time to answer.

Here is a thought. If Wainwright could apply the copyright law to the 214 Lake District Fells he wrote about it would mean nobody could write about a walk in the Lake District if they went up a fell!

I have posted many times on this forum and on my Flickr account with details of routes in the Lake District. I have not broken any copyright laws, nor has anyone else who writes up a walk, and neither have you. Nice website by the way, I didn't know you had one until now  O0

PS I have never heard of John Merrill  :D
« Last Edit: 20:01:51, 04/09/19 by April »
Hate will never win

ninthace

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Are you sure these emails have actually come from John Merrill himself? I wonder if the Board of Trustees have decided to tighten things up and use aggressive tactics to increase revenue? It might be worth talking to him on the phone and getting to the bottom of this as he is doing serious damage to his reputation.
John Merrill is the Director of the Foundation, as such, he is responsible
Solvitur Ambulando

richardh1905

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I had never heard of John Merrill either, April.

Now I know about him for all the wrong reasons.
WildAboutWalking - Join me on my walks through the wilder parts of Britain

Hillhiker1

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I had never heard of John Merrill either, April.

Now I know about him for all the wrong reasons.


Maybe you know him for the right reasons... :D
I've never heard of him either, and now that I have; I certainly won't be buying any of his products

harry_keogh

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Quote from: Hillhiker1
I've never heard of him either, and now that I have; I certainly won't be buying any of his products
Not even the daysack?

Hillhiker1

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Not even the daysack?


You do realise that I'm going to have to go and look at that now don't you? ... :D

 

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