Post #475275 by Sabu The Coconut Boy on Thu, Aug 6, 2009 11:48 PM

Believe me, I have no issue with you using this site to sell your mugs on eBay. It's smart and you have the right to get the maximum value out of them.

I don't even have a big issue if your sole reason for joining this website was to find out about these mugs so you could sell them. A lot of folks join simply to sell us tiki mugs and yours are better than most. Some folks would prefer that you contribute for a while before you try to sell in Marketplace, but I know that's too idealistic.

But when you try to sell to us using our own pictures and words which you cut and pasted from this site. That's when I feel a bit insulted. And when you promise that your content-scraping is "a real interesting read!", then I definitely feel that my intelligence is being insulted. Of course it's an interesting read. I've been reading it for months in "Locating Tiki". The folks who wrote it are interesting folks.

Plus you're using links to OUR pics and words on YOUR website in your eBay auction without crediting the source or re-stating the text in your own words. It's not going to get you arrested, but it's really tacky and, c'mon, we learned this was wrong in highschool.

All of these pics are technically public - both the ones you can find on newspaper sites and the ones people posted here from their private collections. However, time, effort, and money went into acquiring these menus and matchbooks and magazines so that they could be shared with the tiki community. We're realistic enough to know that sometimes these pics are going to end up on eBay to help sell mugs. But to use them to sell to us on our own site, in our own words, without credit given. That takes balls.

I'm sorry folks sent you hate e-mails. That was wrong and I don't condone it.

Sabu