Getting the M&G online staff to do anything is a bit like sucking egg out of a sausage isn’t it? Take my heartbreaking efforts to get the robotic hacks to correct the F-up where my entire blog suddenly migrated to amagama, (sick) without any prior warning! After neglecting to provide me with a new login, they started sending me sarky messages saying my blog had been deleted, this after a nasty episode in December in which one of my more controversial postings was destroyed after a complaint from a former BOSS agent and NIA apartheid spy.
Not the first time I’ve been censored, but getting censored by the M&G is like getting censored by a buch of prune farmers in brakfonteinspruit. After numerous appeals, protestations, fulminations and phones calls in the middle of the night, I lost my cool and sent out the following email on Tuesday, 4 September, 2007 2:41:41 PM
To Whom It may concern,
In December last year the M&G online, deleted a posting made on the M&G Blogspot and blocked my access to my own material. I protested and the resulting correspondence can still be seen online Limitations of free speech go too far January 24 2007 and Don’t mention the war January 22 2007.
After speaking to Riaan Wolmeraans, the M&G Online editor, I eventually got the right to respond to the allegations made by a former NIA spy.. The matter would have stopped right there, but instead three things happened:
1. Amagama.com was formed
2. The Mail& Guardian got into bed with Media24, a company accused of racism and antisemitism
3. I was denied access to amagama while my entire blog migrated and was then deleted.
I am therefore forced to protect my property and to ask a court to establish that copyright exists in my work. Even though numerous complaints have been made, the M&G acts as if it is above the law. Frankly I don’t give a fig if the racist press in this country is regulated, or if SANEF collapses entirely because corporate media hacks have shown that they are as dishonest, capable of fraud, and hypocritical as their counterparts were during apartheid.
Example, 12 months after my allegations of racism and antisemitism against Media24 and there has been absolutely no attempt to uncover the truth. The Cape Times has published fraudulent stories conveniently forgetting I have any rights, and I stand absolutely no chance of getting my labour case into court since the Cape Bar has shown itself as racist and antisemitic as the law of the past.
Lets regulate the media in favour of individual rights to self-ownership, copyright, and so forth.
David Robert Lewis
Then, just as just about to hand over my hard earned cash for petty lawyers letters and getting into bed with Don Corleone while filling out neurotically charged legal forms in a nearby police office, okay, okay, I wasn’t online at the time, at Tuesday, 4 September, 2007 3:08:36 PM and yes, barely 27 minutes later, (and after 8 months of badgering) in what must rate as world record for responsive robotics by Vince Maher the following email mysteriously arrived:
Fwd: your blog details
As we discussed over the telephone, again. Here are your login details which allow you to export your blog and delete it.
———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Vincent Maher <[email protected]>
Date: Jun 7, 2007 7:07 PM
Subject: your blog details
To: [email protected]
Hi David
Your admin address is:
http://davidrobertlewis.amagama.com/wp-admin
Your blog address is:
http://davidrobertlewis.amagama.com/
username:davidrobertlewis
pass:***** (please change this once you’re in there)
Let me know if there are any problems.
—
Kind regards,
_________________________________
Vincent Maher
Strategist, Mail & Guardian Online
“Accidents don’t happen to people who take accidents as a personal
insult” – Don Corleone
Blogs: http://www.vincentmaher.com
Tel: +27 11 250 7359
Mobile: +27 84 583 5412
MSN: [email protected]
Skype Name: vincentmaher
I’ve attempted to decode its inner meaning and ethereal beauty but for the life of me, I cannot figure it out, except, I guess that means I’m here, in foreign territory, while I still languish under SA copyright law — the merest intention of writing for publication in SA means the publisher owns your copyright. Since I’ve been published by nearly everybody in the deep south, that probably means I’m flat broke, and can’t even afford to pay the fees to regain the rights to my own domain. If anyone else out there is planning on hijacking my work and ransoming off the outcome, I doubt if anyone is willing to pay for the kind of stats I was getting on average 100 people per post. Better off getting published in the real world, now there’s a thought.
Would love to know what bloggers think, or if any amagamarati have followed me, also your thoughts on the the Media24 racist saga and INM fraud.
PS:Check out my story on Zoopy, a new SA video site
http://www.zoopy.com/video_2630_David_Robert_Lewis_My_Story_Part_1.html
http://www.zoopy.com/video_2694_David_Robert_Lewis_My_Story_Part_2.html
http://www.zoopy.com/video_2694_David_Robert_Lewis_My_Story_Part_3.html
http://www.zoopy.com/video_2694_David_Robert_Lewis_My_Story_Part_4.html
http://www.zoopy.com/video_2694_David_Robert_Lewis_My_Story_Part_5.html
http://www.zoopy.com/video_2694_David_Robert_Lewis_My_Story_Part_6.html
http://www.zoopy.com/video_2694_David_Robert_Lewis_My_Story_Part_7.html
http://www.zoopy.com/video_2694_David_Robert_Lewis_My_Story_Part_8.html
http://www.zoopy.com/video_2694_David_Robert_Lewis_My_Story_Part_9.html
http://www.zoopy.com/video_2694_David_Robert_Lewis_My_Story_Part_10.html
http://www.zoopy.com/video_2694_David_Robert_Lewis_My_Story_Part_11.html
http://www.zoopy.com/video_2694_David_Robert_Lewis_My_Story_Part_12.html
David, the telephonic conversation I was talking about was the one where I said to you quite clearly that I would export your blog and email it to you. You agreed and seemed happy. After I emailed you I heard nothing for weeks and then you started sending more ridiculous messages.
So let’s just see this for what it is: You forgot your Blogmark password, or were no longer using the email address you used to create your Blogmark account, and then accused us of stealing your blog when we move it onto Amagama.
The reason my email sounded robotic was because it took me a few minutes of editing to make it sound civil. Why would I not feel like being civil? Because the ONLY time you have ever spoken to me on the phone we agreed on a solution to your problem and then you pretended that conversation never happened.
If you want people to co-operate with you you need to be civil towards them and act in good faith when you agree to something. How else are we supposed to help you move your blog to a new platform. Congratulations on that by the way, I am glad to see it worked out.
Agreed, there was just such a phone call, after much venting with Riaan Wolmeraan’s I was finally handed over to you and you agreed to zip the contents of my entire blog and email it to me which you didn’t do. What you did was absolutely nothing. So bang goes the issue of good faith.
No I didn’t forget my password, what happened is that M&G Online, who are in bed with the devil, simply forgot to inform users and neglected to email me the logon details, as if they cared.
Question of whether this is a civil or criminal matter is an interesting one. I’m on the side of those who believe copyright theft is a criminal offence, at least insomuch as it applies to ones body of work, come on, hijacking an entire blog, that’s like making off with the contents of somebodies house and then pleading for clemancy, you are welcome to admit youself to my own aslyumn for the criminally insane and internet challenged languish, since I did pretty much the same thing to some digirati on the WELL a couple of years ago (1994), so you have some symphathy, but as for where all this is going, damn if I’m going to fall for that no borders, no boundaries, lets everybody takeover the world nonesense again.