{"id":10428,"date":"2015-10-16T06:51:27","date_gmt":"2015-10-16T10:51:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/?p=10428"},"modified":"2015-10-16T06:56:43","modified_gmt":"2015-10-16T10:56:43","slug":"boot-retailers-reputation-unethical","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/?p=10428","title":{"rendered":"Boot Retailer’s Reputation: Unethical"},"content":{"rendered":"

I regret to learn that a boot retailer from which I have purchased many pairs of boots has behaved unethically, and after giving them a chance to explain themselves and not receiving any response or acknowledgment, I breathe a deep sigh and now have to pursue a copyright infringement claim against them. This situation is quite regrettable.
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\nBack in 2008, I wrote my Guide to Motorcycle Boots<\/a> and published it on my website. I included a copyright statement on that page, as well as have a strong copyright statement<\/a> that covers all content and images on my website.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, JGear1, which does business as “onlinebootstore”, posted the full content of my Guide to Motorcycle Boots on their store’s blog without my permission.<\/p>\n

I should be flattered that they thought that my Guide was useful and wanted to share it. But sharing it without asking me, and literally stealing its entire content — all words (except the copyright statement) and images — is unethical.<\/p>\n

I wrote to them when I discovered what they did, but they have not responded. So now I have to pursue more formal legal action, which is regretful. For now, I changed the statement on my links page<\/a> to say that I no longer recommend that company due to evidence of unethical behavior.<\/p>\n

Not everything on the internet may be downloaded, copied, and reposted elsewhere. Most everything on the ‘net is copyrighted merely by being published on a website. Some of us have posted even stronger copyright statements, as I have.<\/p>\n

I started writing copyright statements and pursuing action to protect my intellectual property (mostly images, but also text in my tutorials) back in 2007 when a guy who ran a Yahoo Group about boots kept posted my photos on his group site without my permission. When I communicated with him, he always claimed that he got the image from someone who sent it to him. He also did as I requested: took the image down and didn’t repost it. <\/p>\n

There have been occasional occurrences of this happening on other sites as well. The most egregious “theft” was a minister in Pennsylvania who downloaded pictures of me and posted them on a gay dating site as himself. He was about to lure a guy from the West Coast to come to stay with him when the West Coast guy figured it out and communicated with me. I put a stop to that quickly by threatening to out the minister to his congregation.<\/p>\n

\"Wetcop11\"I also have seen occasional postings of my photos in random other places. Sometimes, you can’t prevent it. That’s why I overwrite a copyright statement on images of cops and boots on my cop galleries<\/a>. It’s regretful that I have to do that, but in the first year that gallery was posted, I saw my images on many other blogs and postings all over the ‘net, including the hotboots “boots on line” board (which is exceptionally responsive to concerns about image theft.)<\/p>\n

I am really sorry that “onlinebootstore” will not own up to what they did and work with me on resolving this matter. I probably would have given them permission to post my work if they had asked, perhaps in return for a minor form of compensation. But not now. Since this company behaved that way, their reputation for trustworthiness is in question. I can’t recommend buying anything from them.<\/p>\n

Life is short: protect your intellectual property.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I regret to learn that a boot retailer from which I have purchased many pairs of boots has behaved unethically, and after giving them a chance to explain themselves and not receiving any response or acknowledgment, I breathe a deep … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-website"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10428\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}