PJCNET

I’m a founder member of a paranormal investigation and research group called Birmingham Investigators of the Unknown. Our website is in much need of updating at the moment although we are working on a brand new interactive website, it’s a matter of allocating the time as it’s a lot of work. We have hundreds of pieces of photographic evidence as well as numerous videos and dictaphone recordings, but what happens if someone wrongfully breaches copyright infringement and uses some of the photographs as their own without our permission on their own website?

Members of BirminghamIU agree and sign paperwork to say that the evidence remains the property of BirminghamIU. This is mainly in case members leave and insist that we remove evidence from our website that’s collected on investigations.

On one particular training investigation, one particular member of BirminghamIU attended who will remain unnamed so as to fully comply with The Data Protection Act 1998. As usual my good friend and college who is also a founder member of BirminghamIU took various photos of the location using his own digital camera that is used officially for collecting BirminghamIU evidence. He caught lots of ‘orbs’ on one photo, although I was sceptical at the time as to if they were caused by small particles like pollen or dust as there was so many. This is evidence collected by BirminghamIU using BirminghamIU equipment for BirminghamIU and wasn’t even taken by the person who claims to own it.

The particular ex-member in question wanted a copy of the evidence to analyse as part of our ongoing training and we agreed as this person was officially part of BirminghamIU at the time, but at no time did this evidence become this person’s property. For personal reasons, this unnamed member later decided to leave BirminghamIU for their own personal reasons that were not connected to BirminghamIU itself or the paranormal, but we have since found these photographs up on a website that the past member has since created their self using what appears to be a free website creator on a free Blueyonder domain (now owned by Virgin Media). The photos are currently put up as this person’s own without BirminghamIU’s permission and without any acknowledgement to the legal owner who took them using his own equipment for the explicit purpose of obtaining evidence for BirminghamIU. The photos are very decent as they’re taken using a camera that is far superior to the camera that was owned by this past member at the time and my college is a very good photographer. We are not ogres, but if people want to use our property, they should ask our permission and credit to the owner should be given, they certainly shouldn’t be passed on as someone else’s property and this is clearly wrong and in fact a breach of copyright. Also we don’t want to be wrongfully linked to what is in my opinion an extremely unprofessional website by using misleading website names and information.

The first stolen photo includes numerous ‘orbs’, in fact it shows about the most ‘orbs’ we’ve ever taken on location on a single photograph. We was saving it for an ‘orb’ debate on our own website as to whether they are caused by dust or pollen as I personally brought up as possible causes at the time, but this past member has also used what I quoted at the time to use in her own debate about our photo, even mentioning “pollen” which was my own personal theory, NOT this persons. The second stolen photo is simply a nice picture from outside the church where we attended. We always reduce our photos when publishing on-line so they cannot be stolen in full quality, although this person has published them in full original 10 Megapixel quality without even a watermark so anyone can now also steal our property without our permission. I include a reduced copy of the stolen copyrighted photographs here that are legally the property of Birmingham Investigators of the Unknown:

(The above stolen copyrighted photos were taken by Peter of BirminghamIU using his own 10K Fujifilm camera on the evening of 1st June 2009 while on official training with BirminghamIU.)

This location was kept as a private location to BirminghamIU, although the old member has also leaked this information publicly.

The old member has also called herself an “investigator of the unknown” and this also reflects in the name of the website, which we see as purposely misleading people into believing she is still linked to BirminghamIU (Birmingham “Investigators of the Unknown”) when she certainly isn’t and is now of no connection. Equipment put in this website is also very similar to BirminghamIU’s website although the person had none of this equipment listed when actually a member of BirminghamIU. A widget we used with The Moon Phase has also been copied and used, this widget can be legally used anywhere, but it also adds to make it look even more falsely connected to BirminghamIU.

We now want this past member of BirminghamIU to remove our copyrighted material from their website immediately. We want this past member to ensure that it’s made clear that her website is NOT connected to BirminghamIU in any way or form. It wouldn’t be so bad if the website was professional, but unfortunately it’s all over the place, it’s packed with terrible grammar, spelling mistakes and some of it is written so badly, it doesn’t even made sense as it’s not proper English. Sorry, but I won’t link to the website in question as I don’t want to help this person show off our stolen evidence as their own, the more hits to this website and the more external links, the higher the search engine rankings.

We at BirminghamIU will be seeking legal advice to force removal of our copyrighted and owned evidence if necessary. We will first be contacting the host of the web-space in question which is Virgin Media and the owner of the website in the hope of an amicable solution. Please watch this space of further updates and more information about what can be done to prevent or deal with similar happening to yourself.

Legal Disclaimer

This article is my own personal opinion and is without prejudice to any person, persons or organisation named or unnamed. We are NOT holding accountable Virgin Media as a website host in any way or form for the website that is showing BirminghamIU’s copyrighted photographs as it’s unreasonable to expect them to police unauthorised copyrighted material when they allocate personal web-space to literally thousands of customers. My full legal disclaimer applies to this article, any comments and any other article on this website.

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