Important: See note at the end of this post.
Over the years, I have written and copyrighted many articles. Unfortunately, those articles have occasionally appeared on someone else's website-minus my copyright notices, bylines, or links back to my site.
For the last four years (and most recently this past weekend) I've been asking Jack Derby (his bio and affiliations) to remove my copyrighted content from his website. On his site are two of my articles, but display neither my copyright notice nor my byline.
Derby is a sales and management consultant in the Boston area and an adjunct professor of entrepreneurial sales & marketing at Tufts University.
Never denying that the content was mine, Derby has failed to comply with my many requests to remove my material from his website. This past weekend I told him that my last resort would be to publish this blog post. To that he did not respond. (I have even offered to pay for a mutually agreed-upon third party to remove the content.)
It is time to to put this situation out there in the most objective, careful terms possible.
Following are the links for my copyrighted work and the corresponding text on his site (one of his versions even kept the link to my email embedded in it):
There are dozens of other articles on the site that have no copyright notices or bylines. I believe these are worthy of inspection by authors and experts. Here are the directories on Jack Derby's site that contain articles related to sales and marketing:
- http://www.derbymanagement.com/knowledge/pages/winning.html
- http://www.derbymanagement.com/knowledge/pages/research.html
- http://www.derbymanagement.com/knowledge/pages/basics.html
- http://www.derbymanagement.com/knowledge/pages/recruiting.html
- http://www.derbymanagement.com/knowledge/pages/tactics.html
- http://www.derbymanagement.com/knowledge/pages/tools.html
Consider taking a look at any articles where the title looks familiar. If an article is yours, and you have not given Jack permission to publish it on his site, let me know. You'll probably want to contact Jack as well.
A few quick Google searches show that other articles on Derby's site with no copyright or byline match up to articles published on other websites. I have not contacted all the authors in the partial list below. And I do understand that, unlike my situation, Jack may have obtained permission from the authors to display the articles on his website.
- Linda Richardson (Derby's and Linda's 1 or 2);
- Dave Kahle (Derby's and Dave's and again, Derby's and Dave's on BNET);
- Art Siegel (Derby's and Art's);
- Nelson Mendez Jr. (Derby's and Nelson's);
- Michael Allen (Derby's and from Mike's book);
- David Berger (Derby's and David's);
- Bob Leduc (Derby's and Bob's);
- Patricia Fripp (Derby's and Patricia's);
- Joe Hadzima / MIT Sloan School (Derby's and Joe's);
- Craig Aramian (Derby's and Craig's beginning at "Planning Ahead");
- John R. Graham, Nation's Restaurant News, BNET (Derby's and John's).
Note: The links were live as of this posting. If Jack removes content, obviously clicking on a link will result in an error.
I am not a lawyer, and do not know the legal ins and outs of copyright violation and theft of intellectual property. I do know, however, that the use of someone else's material, without identification or attribution, and in the absence of express written permission, is unethical, unprofessional, and something all those of who respect sales should condemn in the strongest possible terms.
If Jack or someone else can explain why my articles remain on his site, I freely offer this space for them to explain, and if appropriate, I will apologize in an even more public manner for any wrongful intimation.
In the meantime, Jack Derby, get my copyrighted articles off your website.
Note: As of 8:00 am November 14, 2008 the knowledge section of the site has been taken down.Link to original post