Robert Tulip

Okay, to summarise. This Joel Watts character has a blog where he says under Creative Commons that anyone is welcome to quote his stuff. Neil Godfrey quotes Watts. Watts then organises to delete Godfrey's whole blog without adequate notice, falsely claiming breach of copyright. Watts then deletes his creative commons licence, perhaps after he reads this thread, realizing the look is not good.

Way to go Joel. Get a lawyer son, you're gonna need a real good one.

neilgodfrey

Something certainly does not add up but I can assure you I received no warning whatever from either Joel or Wordpress. None. The first time I saw the take-down notice after the site had been taken down and Wordpress sent me, at my request, a copy of that notice.

They later claimed, again on my request, that they sent it prior to the take-down but I have searched my gmail by keyword, by titles, by dates, by senders, and there is absolutely nothing in my inbox, spam or any other folder according to the results of repeated searches. (And no, I do not clean out my gmail --- it's gmail, it just sits there with over 24,000 emails cumulated now. But a legal inspection could establish what has been deleted anyway.)

When the offending post (not the blog) was removed from public view I asked Tim if he had accidentally changed its status and he thought he may have while he was doing something (though he wasn't sure) -- so on the strength of that I reposted it for public viewing. I see now in hindsight that that is what Joel and Wordpress interpreted as deliberate flouting of the take-down notice -- again, a notice I never received.

I have filed my legal response offering my gmail to be scrutinized to verify this.

Besides, Wordpress conditions say that Joel was expected to post a comment on the offending post and clearly Joel did not do that.

Moreover, I even posted a comment on Joel's blog telling him of my post and he replied within 6 minutes and issued no complaint about my creating the post as I did.

He had every opportunity to make it clear to me with a simple comment on the post itself -- according to Wordpress Automattic Inc directions for attempted dispute resolution before filing a complaint as he did.

Meanwhile, the offending post is once again online at http://vridar.org/2013/06/26/the-laz...lical-scholar/

I would love to get more details from both Joel and the person who supposedly sent the Wordpress takedown notice and the exact processes and workflows. Something does not add up, I agree.

But I am not accusing Joel or Wordpress of lying about that point. I simply don't know what happened. Meanwhile, Tom (a person who sends me flattering emails when he thinks I'm in a position to post something positive about his book but turns to kick me when I don't) and others can and will assume I am lying and that I did receive warnings. I can't help that. They have been accusing me of lying and all sorts of other depravities merely because I expose the incompetence and outright charlatanry of a small handful of "scholars" -- with a particular thrust at the idiocy of Joel Watts most recently.

Toto

Irreducible Complexity has screenshots showing that Joel Watts changed his Creative Commons license to one that he wrote himself

© Joel L. Watts and Unsettled Christianity, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Unsettled Christianity with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. For more information, see here.

aspronot

The version above more closely conforms to the facts.

Edit: Wordpress removed Neil's blog when it appeared to them that Neil was flouting their take-down of the "offending" blog post.

neilgodfrey

I have posted an updated description of what happened with the Vridar blog as I have experienced it all. http://vridar.org/2013/06/29/what-happened-to-vridar/

It follows my realization that Joel was pretending to know nothing about the reason the blog was deactivated until after I posted the evidence I requested from Wordpress.

This surely raises questions. If, as he now says, he sent me an email complaint in advance, and even produces the image of that email supposedly verifying his claim, then surely he would expect me to make it clear from the beginning of his involvement.

Yet it was only after I gathered evidence I requested from Wordpress -- after the blog was taken down -- that Joel suddenly went on the attack and blaming me for what had happened.

Before then, he was laughing about his earlier attempts to take down other blogs and saying how hopeless a task it was.

As my flattering poison friend Tom says, something does not add up here.

I have since seen that others had already observed the same things. I was pretty occupied with other things and tiredness at the time so only now am I gaining a clearer picture of what has happened.

hjalti

In light of this comment from Joel (which I will copy in full! ) where he's responding to Steven Carr pointing out the CC-license, I must say that I agree with you:

That cc-stuff doesn't actually mean you can copy his stuff.

Steven Carr

Watts has picked up a second-hand copy of the Scientology play book and is trying to stop people pointing out his mistakes by claiming his stuff is copyright.

But the Scientologists have been doing this for longer and they managed to work out not to put 'Creative Commons Licence' on their material.

James The Least

I had actually considered "Unsettled Christianity" to be a pretty good blog prior to this.

I suppose the psychotic overreaction of Joseph Hoffmann to "the emperor wears no clothes" criticism from Neil last year served as sufficient warning. Bible scholars do not take kindly to jeers from the rabble. They didn't spend their entire lives learning how to rationalize an ancient myth through sophisticated obfuscation only to be satirized as pompous fools by irreverent Wordpress bloggers. Their students and friends read the Web, too. And so they strike back with vicious threats and lies, to the point of shutting down your blog, if they can. Heretics must be stopped!

hjalti

But Steven, like Joel said: "because CC was sorely misunderstood (like other processes by pseudo-scholars) [Joel Watts] went with the (c) that has always been present on [his] site (look at the bottom of the page where it says… ALL RIGHTS RESERVED."

Yeah...Neil misunderstood that "you are free to copy" as being a permission to copy.

Grog

It is frankly shocking to me that Watts filed a DMCA claim over that post. What part of that post even deserves protection? His use of "Egg-cept?" Let's let him have credit for coining that clever turn of phrase.

It's interesting that he has changed the copyright notice. This smacks of dishonesty.