Ahhhhhh... finally I understood the gist of what Christine was saying.   She was stating that it was not a simple 'cut and paste' theft of her web pages, but instead she was laying claim to the ownership of any and all hyperlinks that had been used.   The 'content' ( all the superfluous text she had surrounded the hyperlinks with ) had not been stolen... but instead it was the duplication of just the hyperlinks used on her site. 

Christine admits that " That ONE PAGE of your site mirrors MY ENTIRE 26-page Bibliography "  That is the first acknowledgement of a difference regarding the disputed content.

By Christine's own admission she also noted that  " All you did was remove the authors' names!! ".  That is the second acknowledgement that the web pages were different.

It became clear to me that the reason I had not noticed a similarity between my list which contained only hyperlinks and Christine's is that I only had hyperlinks, where as she had surrounded those hyperlinks with assorted supporting content ( text etc ) for 26 pages.  

So it was boiling down to Christine complaining that the hyperlinks were displayed in the similar order by which she had interspersed hyperlinks throughout her 26 web page.

My first thought was that no one has a sole explusive copyright to a hyperlink.   Otherwise there would only exist one instance of any given hyperlink on the Internet.  Remaining professional and courteous I again responded :

I trust and hope that most readers of this tale will agree that again I remained professional and courteous to what was beginning to sound like a ludicrous and laughable demand.   As noted in my reply, I saw more of a legal landmine in the fact that both of us were using 'deep linking' to direct our visitors to the hyperlinked content.  

I was concerned by her claim that the physical order of the hyperlinks was similar in some instances to the alphabetized bibliographic order by author, used on Christine's web site

I took the disputed web page down while and removed public access to the page while I investigated the similarity of the physical order by which the hyperlinks were listed.   There were links in both list which were duplicates.  But our list of hyperlinks contained more entries that were NOT found in Christine's entire web site.

As it was an insignificant issue compared to the hyperlinks I sorted the display of the hyperlinks to reflect WHERE the documents and tutorials were located and stored.    I felt this was a reasonable gesture to show our good intent and respect the arrangement by which Christine had chosen to display the authors works in her bibliographic listing.

Notwithstanding this good faith measure I also chose to create an entirely new hyperlink listing.  The result of that effort is that our present comprehensive compilation of "hyperlinks" is not a derivative  work of Christine.  It was created by a controlled search using specific search parameters on Google, Cite Seer, Copernic and other such similar search based resources..

The combined results of that effort was consolidated and condensed down to just the hyperlinks of the retrieved
search results. As such anyone using the same search parameters could also duplicate the same gathering and condensing of all the "hyperlink" results that we have presently included in our current hyperlink compilation..

This effort was done to ensure that no one could challenge the pedigree of where the 'hyperlinks' had originated from.  The end result was that our hyperlink list had grown even more comprehensive and larger.   Yes, there will still some duplicates of hyperlinks that were found in Christine's web page, but the number of non-duplicates had more than doubled. 

Nonetheless the key point to note is that our creation of this completely new hyperlink list was an original work, created from scratch and solely using only our research using search engiines to locate the desired hyperlinks that were relevant to the topic of computer, network and digital forensics.

But to assure myself that no one person can lay legal claim to being the only person to display a given hyperlink, I simply assured Christine that I would 'seek legal counsel's opinion and if advised the page will simply be deleted'.  

Could I have not been more reasonable, courteous and professional  ?
 

At this point I am not interested in receiving any legal advice or legal interpretations from someone who is not in the legal profession.  And least of all I don't think any reasonable or intelligent person would place any value on such legal guidance coming from a person who is simultaneously threatening legal action against you.   It is like a burglar attempting to give you a lecture on hand gun safely while putting that same gun at your head.

Christine does acknowledge at this point that the original submitter of the hyperlinks may have been at fault by  noting  " The fact that whomever chose to 'steal' my content w/o getting permission from the source is dispicable ".  

At first glance I too would agree with that statement, but unfortunately I am not a mind reader of the orginal submitter, and nor do I know how or where that donated hyperlink list was culled from.  I had already taken steps to address any question or challenges about the pedigree of the hyperlinks by deleting them and creating a new hyperlink list.

The argument now boiled down to a question of 'hyperlink" ownership.   A quick review of the pertinent and applicable Copyright law confirms that :

 In short... a hyperlink on its own is not a copyrightable item.   But possibly a collection or compilation of hyperlinks in a specifc order of display may be considered as a ' material that originated with the author " in that a webmaster had placed a bunch of links in a specific order in their web page.   The problem with that is that any list that is sorted alphabetically is going to duplicate in some instances other list that are sorted alphabetically, as there is a natural order to alphabetizing.  Similarly, a listing of hyperlinks that is sorted by author falls into that same catch-all, in that duplications of order are certain to appear if more than one webmaster chooses to sort their content by the authors names.

Nonetheless, the whole point was moot.   My list of hyperlinks was new, created from scratch and without any use of Christine's list.   Further, our hyperlink list had been sorted and ordered strictly by the third party sites where the documents or tutorials were stored and hence our hyperlink list bore no resemblance to a listing sorted by author names. 

Again I reply to Christine in a professional, reasonable, courteous and respectful manner...
 

At this point Christine loses it.   She has snapped and starts to dictate that I can no longer refer to her by her first name, Christine, in my salutations.    Yes, I too thought that was odd...

She expands on her previous law lectures.  She highlights that all legal advice should be sought and found on Google ( a ludicrous assertion for a Professor to believe that everything published and searchable via Google is gospel or even correct and complete ). 

She seems determined to still not allow me time to obtain qualified legal guidance as if she is worried that I may learn that her claims about here copyright of hyperlinkes from the public domain was as baseless as I had begun to suspect that they may be... 

Christine also uses her next E-mail to assert her contention that her HTML coding is Copyrighted... Yes, I too thought that was wingy in that my hyperlink list only contained <a href=  and </a>.

 Christine writes :

Ok.. me bad.    In cases where you are dealing with people that obviously have no courtesy or professionalism, at some point you have to drop the gloves and hopefully penetrate the mist that fogs their brain of common sense...  and so I wrote back :
 

I should mention that up until now Christine had been silently CC'ing her e-mails off to people in an attempt to gain some moral support and to position herself as a damsel in distress to gain sympathy.

 I felt it was worthwhile to start including them in my future responses.   Sadly Christine had been rather selective in which e-mails she would send to those third parties and often excluded my courteous and professional replies from her CC's so as to not give the 'complete picture' to those persons receiving her edited or selectively trimmed missives.  I felt those third parties deserved full disclosure of everything that was being communicated.
 

Hmmmm....  she certainly does spell things out here to the innocent recipients on her spam poison pen campaign.   Attack me personally with my advertisers, throttle me at Google,  hurt me in the pocketbook... cast dispersions against my personal character all the while leaving herself open to legal action for whatever damages her malicious and vexatious spam campaign may cause ?

It was rather fortunate that she has made it so easy for a lawyer to show what her intent was when she is sued for damages.  Maybe someone who is so quick to threaten legal action should consult with their own lawyer before doing such an ill advised thing. 

And what an odd behaviour it seemed  for someone who is a teacher of students and should certannly have known better.

Chrsitine sadly cannot accept at that for the purposes of this dispute,  she is simply a WEBMASTER of e-Evidence.info.   Instead she tries to assert some sense of 'false authority' into her E-mails by using her Utica.edu e-mail address and the signature block with

Are people being deliberately mislead into thinking that www.e-evidence.info is affiliated or a product of Utica College ?

Are people being deliberately mislead into thinking that she is speaking with the authority and support of Utica College ?

Are people being deliberately mislead into thinking that it is Utica College's intellectual property that has been absconded ?

Or is it simply Christine trying to assert an air of 'false authority syndrome' in order have her allegations taken more seriously than if she was simply writing as Christine Siedsma, WEBMASTER of www.e-evidence.info.   

After all, this dispute does not involve Utica.edu whatsoever. 

Further, you will note that she has created a poison pen web page on her web site that she circulates to all, including people who may happen on her web site while looking for information about computer forensics. 

Initially she used that web page to call me a 'thief' and cast other libelous statements about my character and reputation.  

Suffice to say that she had left herself again legally vulnerable for what she has published about me on her web site.  Tsk tsk tsk...  Tort Law 101 my dear Professor... 

So I take the liberty to make Christine aware that I know of the poison SPAM that she has been sending out :

Hey.  I am a glutton for punishment and I respond to Christine in my usual prompt and courteous manner ;)

I was tempted to give Christine a "Christmas Greeting" but I refrained and went with the more common " Best Wishes "

 

The first communication I received from Randall caught me by surprise.  I had not chatted with Randall in quite some while and his comments immediately convinced me that he had not been provided with a full disclosure of the early exchanges of e-mail where I had consistently been professional and courteous with Christine.   It iappeared that Christine was only providing Randall selected snippets of my past e-mails that were not being presented in the full context of what had been said in the original e-mail

Randall wrote

I naturally replied to Randall and attempted to give him the 'full disclosure' on what had been transpiring between Christine and myself so that he could properly gain a perspective on this matter with all details and not just the partial details with which he had been apparently supplied by Christine.

Randall responded in the fair and reasonable manner that one would expect from a professional with his vast experience.

I responded in the usual courteous and professional manner and also raised the problem of Christine abusing her position at Utica.edu to create an air of "false authority' in her e-mails :
 

Randall was prompt in his reply to me :

Well... it looked like I would now have to have our legal counsel deal directly with this law firm.  So I wrote back to them and provided the following :