Dear Mr Kains,
I am writing to protest at your recent intervention with the Internet
Service Provider, CIA, which resulted in the removal of Special Train
Notices from the personal home pages of one of their subscribers.
Whilst I fully agree that STN's are indeed copyright, I fail to see how
knowledge of the information contained therein can be of detriment to Rail
Access, or any of the branches of State Rail. Indeed, it can benefit those
organisations as, by being able to access details of special workings, etc.,
via the Internet, enthusiasts would be more up-to-date on those workings,
and would therefore not have the need to constantly bother operating staff
to ascertain those details, thereby leaving those employees free to perform
the duties they are paid to do. In addition, ready access to this
information may help to promote the cause of rail enthusiasm, thereby
helping to generate patronage, and thus revenue, for the rail organisations
mentioned above. I therefore feel that your decision to have these pages
removed was thus not only short-sighted but , given that State Rail was
suffering no loss from their publication, also rather small minded. I also
believe that approaching the ISP, rather than the person who actually placed
the pages on the site, was somewhat cowardly.
Regards
David Proctor
daproc@bigfoot.com