Welcome to
ESL Printables,
the website where English Language teachers exchange resources:
worksheets, lesson plans, activities, etc.
Our collection is growing every day with the help of many teachers. If
you want to download you have to send your own contributions.
We are truly sorry about how the events developed. We do agree with your
comments that it was not ethical to not to ask for permission from the owners
of the worksheets which only comprise a fraction of our newest �Learn English�
books. However due to the facts that;
ESL website is
an open ground for exchanging worksheets and that we also submitted
several sheets (there was a false accusation about the authenticity of our
submitted sheets, they were removed even though they were unique designs),
the sheets
that we have downloaded are largely consisting of well known clipart
images, all of which were already purchased by us and already used in our
various publications,
we witnessed
in many schools in Turkey that numerous worksheets from your website were
reproduced in huge quantities and distributed to students as it is
designed and uploaded by the original designer,
on the
contrary of the situation today, there were no warnings of copyright
infringement and ownership issues on the worksheets,
a few of the downloaded worksheets were proposed by one of our board
members to be used in our newest �Learn English� books. These were the facts
that misled us to the improper way of using the downloaded sheets and we take
full responsibility of this error. Misusage of a property against the will of
its rightful owner is strictly against our beliefs.
We also design and publish many patented products and we encounter
infringement problems quite frequently. However, our correspondents in the
other parties have always acted to solve the issue just after receiving our
notification about the problem.
However, we wish wholeheartedly that someone could
notify us or ask for an explanation before or at the same time of declaring
this infringement problem on the website. We do not find it ethical to be
assaulted by many harsh accusations and disgraceful insults while being denied
the opportunity to further investigate the matter and act on a corrective plan.
If we could be got in touch the first day, you would instantly see the positive
reaction that we maintain today even when confronted by the boycott campaign
and various attempts for hacking our website.
For years, and as of today, we worked with a considerable number of
teachers and education professionals who are all satisfied by the level of our
business ethics. The downloaded worksheets are not related to the main subjects
of the books and comprise only a small fraction of the published book. Revising
these problematic books will be completed in a few days and will be sent anyone
upon request. To further reinforce our point, we invite our Turkish colleagues
who are avid supporters of the campaign to our offices and help them see the
revising process as well as our whole product portfolio.
Speaking of our portfolio, these newest �Learn English� books are just
one of our hundreds of products. Today we exceeded all our competitors in terms
of innovations and number of patents we obtained. It�s a point that should be
emphasized that benefiting from our mistake, there are particular employees
from our competitors who want to escalate this campaign perhaps to a level
equivalent of nuclear bombing!
In what scale this unjust public-execution may proceed, we will remain
here to inform you about the process and will not divert from the path of
common sense. We hope to come back with more news during next week.
Until then we wish all members and colleagues a happy and problem-free
new year. And we especially wish to send our best regards to our Turkish
colleagues who were all too eager to support the campaign against us while they
could have picked up the phone and ask for explanations.
These are proofs Liz... I do not think they should be removed or the account cancelled.
Well, well... this is as simple as you published worksheets done by others, so... you can talk, talk, talk and say whatever you want, you are thieves and that �s it, no matter what you say.
This is yet ANOTHER story... MrDgdln rang them and they told him that a native English speaker teaching in turkey gave them to them to publish.. More lies again and again different stories.You will see in Victors thread above the post by Mr Dgdln where he tells how he rang them and what they said. My answers to your 4 points you have made:
Point 1: They had worksheets deleted because they were double accounts and the accounts had the SAME worksheets copied from each other. I know that this is one reason definitely because I remember seeing the worksheets and voting. Having double accounts is not allowed. Submitting work that has not been created by you the author is not allowed, copying and uploading someone else �s work is not allowed. So..... Point 2:So are they saying now they own licences for all the clip art including any CD �s that various members have used? More like bought licences AFTER the fact. So why has your books got a credit for an illustrator but no credits for the websites that provided the clip art? Dodgy. Point 3: DUH, that is what the purpose of this website is for, using worksheets in class with our students, we dont make any profit off them. Point 4: Victor has already shown us cached pages of the website from years back where it clearly states that you can use them for personal use only. The link is in another thread somewhere. So again baseless inaccurate information.
One thing you as a publishing house should know for sure is
that �s an old myth that if it doesn �t have a copyright notice, it �s
free for use. The real fact it �s that EVERYTHING is copyrighted unless
EXPRESSED OTHERWISE. This is the international term, not the opposite.
If
you are a serious company, like you have said, you HAVE TO KNOW about
this, since the company would also not want to see its work somewhere
else, and in fact, it �s only reasonable that before you published
anything you would have searched for information about copyrights and
would know that already.
As a serious publishing company, 25
years in the market, you would know that it �s YOUR JOB to give credits
to ANY WORK that doesn �t belong to the company, you should know that
it �s not PROPER to use work without EXPRESSED PERMISSION (personal
and/or commercial permission) by the author. It doesn �t matter if the
statement was or wasn �t in this website.
Certainly the
authors � lawyers, and yours for that matter, will warn the parts (you
and the eslprintables.com members who have been injured) that what HAD
TO BE EXPLICIT was a notice for free use (both personal and commercial)
for you to be able to use all and any work from the website in your
books. Which is not the case.
There hasn �t been any confusion or baseless accusations, and AFS YAYINCILIK
will certainly have to prove the law courts not only that it didn �t
have bad faith, which alone will be hard, but also that didn �t know
the international copyrights laws, which being a 25 year-old company,
will be almost impossible.
All this community is united and will support all the injured members. With all due respect, don �t expect any kind of sympathy. May justice be done.
I do not believe a word you are saying. The only truth is that you took our work without our permission. The rules have always been clear, you can�t use the material in our page for commercial purposes, you can�t publish it as you have done. These rules have been in the site since the beginning. Only the copyright labels were added after we found out about your illegal publication. They were added to make things clearer.
You claim you uploaded worksheets which were unique designs and that they were unfairly removed. Who do you want to kid? You have two fake accounts, I have proof of this, as you wrote me two pms using one of them. With these fake accounts, you stole materials from other members like Vanda and uploaded them as yours, these are the only worksheets you had fairly removed.
You told me in those pms that you had started to withdraw the books from the sale points, another huge lie, as several members found them in different places and were even able to buy them. I�m about to receive the books. Some of them also phoned you to ask for an explanation or went to your office and your explanations were only more lies.
I�m sure you thought we would never find out about your fake publications but we have. You can�t stop this spreading all over the world.
I�m proud of being part of this big family. I�m glad that our work is being used in thousands of schools, that thousands of photocopies are being distributed to students, that is the purpose of the site. Your purpose was just taking advantage of our work to make money. You deserve every harsh accusation you get. What do you think the Turkish Prime Minister of Education will think of your company when he finds out about this? Have you thought about it?
As a company, I am sure that you and your lawyers are well aware of copyright laws, and as you are not a non-profit organization, your company is here solely for the purpose of making a profit. This is what you have been trying to do, to make a profit from the hard working teachers on this site.
The teachers on this site, as you are fully aware of, are here to share, and yes, to distrubute freely to schools and students. They are not here to publish work that does not belong to them, nor to get money in return.
I can not believe that in this day and age a company such as yours would take us for fools. We are not fools, nor do we believe what you have been trying to pass off on us.
I
think the problem here is that you have used somebody else �s
creations for your personal profit... Many of us have used the WS from
this website, but never to SALE or to GAIN something more than
learning. As I don �t think your books are for free, you made a huge
mistake trying to cheat these people instead of asking for their
permission...
You claim that you have uploaded some WS
here... Why on Earth would you do that? You own a book publishing
company, unless you were trying to get something in return for your
WS???
To VICTOR and other members of our community:
I support you and any actions you take... I �ve posted the mesage on my Facebook, And sent it to as many teachers as I could...
I �d like that all injustice could be fought as in this case...
