HCECF - Homeschool Cooperative

 Sadly, it's occuring among homeschool group leaders.

I'd have to think twice about belonging to a homeschool group where our leader had such little courtesy for others. You see, HCECF's, intro letter that I penned many years ago is being used by another local group, almost verbatem. There have been minor changes - obviously, there is now a different groups name. Greetings, became Hello. However, the majority of it is a word for word lift, right down to the puncuation.

All HCECF has asked for is a note indicating that our intellectual property was used in error, and will now cease to be used and all copies in any form destroyed, otherwise we will be forced to protect our past and future rights to our intellectual property. Basically, admit you made a mistake, stop using it, remove it from wherever you have it, and tell us you have done so. This stops any action from HCECF proceding with a copyright infringement case. We will gladly forgive the past indiscretion IF the simple letter we have requested with the contents indicated is recieved. 

Instead, of taking this simple step, it has been claimed that this is not plagerism,  because no coryright symbol appears. Sorry, please check current copyright law as this is incorrect. Trying to be helpful, I sent a weblink to it, so the group owner in question could inform themselves. The next response, was unbelievable to me, it was that it was basically a coincidence as all groups are the same and the messages will be similar to a degree based on that. It also seems that she is claiming not to have known of our groups message when she penned hers.

The group owner has described her group as " insignificant, very small and not active", and as such seems to imply that we shouldn't be upset. We'll, we ARE upset - very much so. I take pride in my writting, get paid for same, and do not appreciate injustice no matter how small and insignificant in your own mind you believe your group to be. Your thoughts about your group doesn't mean we don't have a right to retain our intellectual property or be compensated if we CHOSE to give up that right. That's not a choice we have made in this case. Our intellectual property should not be used without our consent. That's an interesting thought though, if you're self described as unimportant  we should excuse any of your behaviour.

Envision the impact on our legal system. "Gee, Judge, I did shoot up that class room full of school kids, but I don't think of myself as very important, so just let me get away with it ok?" That's not a country I'd like to live in. I'm glad we have laws and enforce them.

We have made a reasonable request and given you a reasonable out. Please take it. It's really going to be difficult to claim that identical sections of writing likely approaching 75% or greater of yours, and another large portion containing only minor paraphrasing  was really created independantly - pretty sure the infinite monkey theorem would not be a viable defence. HCECF can easily prove that our version has the earlier date.

To everyone who may be using intellectual property belonging to myself or HCECF, please stop now. And think before you insist on making claims that go beyond any accepted degree of reasonablness. Swallow your pride, admit your mistake, fix it and move on.