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Thanks Jim but I need to check this list's archives as I'm clearly missing your original posting. An email system has become an indispensable business and personal communications tool ... when it works. There must still be a backlog in my system somewhere. I will respond to your message once I've found it! Duncan -----Original Message----- From: Economics, business, and related subjects [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Jim Riley Sent: 06 January 2005 20:33 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Another duncanwil.co.uk update Jocelyn - your reply raised some interesting points from my perspective. Things seem to be done a bit differently in academia! This is of relevance to students, since many will hope to move into the commercial world - where the rules seem to be different. Jocelyn wrote: "I believe Duncan is here setting a good example for education, not a bad. One way, though not the only, that research proceeds, is by criticism: a researcher finds what they perceive to be flaws in some constructed object, dissect it, and publish the results of the dissection in the hope that such flaws will be avoided in future. For the criticism to be intelligible to readers, the thing dissected must be visible. Papers often comment on earlier publications, quoting portions so that the comments can be seen alongside the thing commented upon. As long as the papers cite the source, that's accepted to be OK. What's really setting a bad example to students is telling them there are some areas of life where criticism must be moderated because they are not permitted to exhibit the thing they're criticising. You always have the right to argue back." To be fair, I wasn't really making a point about the right to criticise or not. Of course, I don't like Duncan's criticism - because I take things far too personally and I dont agree with his points. But I don't recall suggesting that criticism should be moderated. My point was really a commercial one rather than an academic one. Surely we have the right to request that our copyrighted and trademark-protected materials are not simply copied or reproduced without permission. Surely a hyperlink to the offending materials would suffice so that students/teachers can judge for themselves what laws of charting have been broken? And why on earth would anyone deface those materials by plastering a "fundmental error alert" headline over the materials. Is that also standard academic practice? Would students gain or lose marks in an exam for that? Is that what they are taught to do? For "exhibit" - many in the commercial world looking at this thread would read "copying and pasting without permission If the unauthorised copying and pasting of materials into an academic publication is standard practice, then I apologise for my ignorance. And if the protection afforded by copyright and trademarks really is a sham, then there is lots of work coming the way of academia to rewrite the textbooks. I think copying things without permission is a bad thing for students to be taught. That was my point. And I don't want our materials copied into a commercial or "academic" publication by Duncan without my permission. Jim