False Old Time Radio Researchers Website

[katydidit]

I received an e-mail from the Administration of Old Time Radio Researchers (OTRR). For those of you who are not familiar with this group, they are volunteers who research, catalogue, find old radio shows, etc. and put them on CD in a certified series (photos, background history -- everything). The major goal of this volunteer group is to keep all old-time radio shows available to the public (free) and to preserve them. Sadly, though someone has decided to profit by this. Here is an extract from the e-mail I received:


An individual running an FTP site that charges you to download old time radio shows that he has leeched (gotten from the free sites) has registered the following domain names:

OLDTIMERADIORESEARCHERSGROUP.COM
OLDTIMERADIORESEARCHERSGROUP.NET
OLDTIMERADIORESEARCHERSGROUP.ORG
OLDTIMERADIORESEARCHGROUP.COM
OLDTIMERADIORESEARCHGROUP.NET
OLDTIMERADIORESEARCHGROUP.ORG

This is all done in an effort to fool anyone who googles for the Official Old Time Radio Researcher Group and is directed to these sites. They all take you to the Pay FTP site. This is an attempt to make people think that they have to pay to get old time radio programs.

We offer them free in our distribution group, as do all other old time radio groups at yahoo. Additionally you can download all the FREE old time radio programs you want from www.archive.org. Just put old time radio programs in the search engine. OTRR has many of its official releases there.

The pay FTP site just takes them, strips out our information, and puts them on the pay FTP site.

Additionally, many of you have submitted CD artwork to our Art Gallery. The person who runs the pay FTP site has copied all our artwork to that site and lists them as 'public domain'. All items on the official OTRR website are protected by copyright and is prohibited from being used on pay sites.They are free for personal use.

Additionally the pay FTP site has stolen the database for our OTTER progam, which many of you use, and lists as their creation. Again, the OTRR Database is copyrighted, and is for personal use. We do grant permission for it to be used on FREE sites, not ones that charge for their material.

You may want to browse the art gallery at the pay FTP site to see if any of the artwork you've done for this site is there and ask them to remove it. That site has a notice that they respect copyrited materials.

We've e-mailed them several times and asked for all OTRR materials to be removedfrom that site, but no response. You might want to add your voice to the list.

Again, be aware that the above web addresses are not linked to the official Old Time Researchers Group in any way.

Keep an eye out, katy