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Beachcomber is getting more than a mite angry about the Internet. His concern is that anyone can put anything on the Internet and many trusting users believe that anything netted must be true.
There are also some naughty boys out there keen to take advantage of others' labours.
Take the website of a soon-to-be-launched outfit which calls itself Island Divers in Kalkan, Turkey. It lifted from www.divernet.com not just a news story, but also a full-length feature which had appeared in Diver, and reproduced them, pictures and all, on its own website.
It might have asked for permission, but didn't. Where the original article by David Oldale gave BT Diving as a contact for diving, this was removed and the culprit's own contact details substituted.
You may think that this was quite enough, but in a somewhat refreshingly free interpretation of the laws of copyright, the fledgling centre added at the bottom of the page: "Copyright 2002-2003 Island Divers Kalkan. All rights reserved."
Beachcomber felt he just had to contact Island Divers to congratulate it on its enterprise. It offered ignorance as its excuse. Which made Beachcomber even more angry.
It's not the first time, and sadly it won't be the last, that the unprincipled have taken liberties with copyright material from Diver and elsewhere.
Beachcomber has been lifted and distorted. And only recently a US equipment manufacturer, which should know better, published a long and glowing review of one of its products and said that this was the full text of a test that had appeared "in abbreviated form" in Diver.
Those who think they can get away with murder on the Internet should take care. The Editor of Diver has asked Beachcomber, in view of his legal degrees and close friends in High Court judging circles, to contact the best lawyers in the copyright field about nicking from Diver's columns.
I, of course, warned him that when given a sniff of copyright infringement, these legal lads are difficult to hold in check.
"Never mind," said our Beloved Editor, "let loose the dogs. And what's more, take their muzzles off!"
Rumpole rides again... You have been warned.
Though it is scarce February, the New Year is turning decidedly chill. In Beachcomber's garret high in Eaton Towers, coal is in short supply and candles are, it seems, too expensive to be issued to the staff. So it is that I have to hold a hand-written missive up to the cobwebbed window to read it. It is my first complaint of '03.
"What have you got against first-class divers?" The scrawled words are driven across the paper by an angry hand. Then follows a load of arrogance and impudence.
I shall ignore that, but I will do a "cheriblair" about the main complaint. You see, I had no idea that I was against first-class divers.
It is true that I wrote about the misbehaviour of first-class divers on several occasions last year, but no more than similar tales about novice divers and much less than about try-dive journos and their oxygen tanks.
If I have offended anyone, I am truly sorry.
In fact, all my castigation of the first-class divers who have starred in this column has been well-deserved and in the interests of better British diving. They are not above Beachcomber's Law. The fact that some of them think they are means that I have not punished enough of them. Or fined them enough for the Diver Lifeboat Fund to make them turn from their wicked ways below the surface.
To show that I am not biased against these doubtless splendid fellows, I shall tell you a much delayed tale from one of my Dorset Leaks. It came to me at the end of last year and must have been mislaid among my stacks of other leaked reports.
My Weymouth Leak told of a first-class diver and advanced instructor from Essex who, when diving at 37m, met an old mate he had not seen for some considerable time. Now I am told that some first-class divers apparently think that the thing to do in such circumstances is to pull out your old mate's mouthpiece.
Having made this cheery greeting, he swam off, not waiting to see if his old mate had retrieved his valve, which fortunately he did. On his return to the boat, the old mate waited by the diving ladder for the reappearance of the other man and then revived an old Essex custom by peeing on him from a great height.
Though I can understand his action, I do not condone it, and do not consider that it met the punishment required for this dangerous action. Beachcomber can do better.
So I therefore request and require that the first-class idiot from Essex sends me without the slightest delay five crisp crunchies for the Lifeboat Fund, or I shall have to invoke the rarely-used procedure for stripping him of his first-class qualification.
It seems that last month I underplayed the rewards to be earned from "white gold", which is what American divers call the golfballs they mine from water hazards on golf courses.
A golf magazine editor has put me right by telling me that about a billion new golfballs are produced each year. Of these, 100 million end up in US golfballing divers' hands and are resold.
This means that hardworking divers earn up to £50,000 each per year.
On the basis of these earnings, the BDGU (British Divers Golfball Union) will be submitting a new pay claim for its members very shortly.
Beachcomber has been informed by a well-known TV presenter that diving is to become part of one of those Survivor-type programmes. In this game show, you have to spot which of the divers will panic when stressed during a dive.
For the pilot programme, contestants included Mary, a 24-year-old junior businesswoman, who has been treated by a psychoanalyst for neurosis. Despite being nervous, Mary has taken up diving so that she can be with her boyfriend, a keen diver. Viewers will see her carrying out a buddy-check and notice that she checks the same things over and over again.
Then there is Dick, 42, a successful lawyer, who is obviously a nitpicker in his job. He chain-smokes and arrives late for the dive. He too checks all his equipment meticulously. His logbook contains more than 100 dives.
Third contestant for the pilot programme is Charlie, aged 22. He arrives for the dive with two buddies, all of them hung-over from the night before. Charlie is at university and doesn't dive regularly, only on holiday. He makes jokes throughout the dive briefing.
Who panics? Sadly for the TV company marketing the show, the answer is: all of them! But it is making another pilot. Perhaps it's the viewers who should be panicking.
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