October 30th, 2016

If you download the file for HaRakevet Issue 100 (see "Download"), on Page 11 you will see one of the two photos blanked out. This was a picture of the Jerusalem trams operating in the snow. The reason for this deletion is that a Jerusalem photo agency, Flash 90, claims that that photo was taken, not as the adjacent caption states, by one Olivia Patussi, but by an employee of theirs, and is subject to copyright. They demanded through their lawyer, Shok-Shaked Nachman, that we remove it from the web site, which we did immediately, and that we pay them damages for this dreadful breach of copyright by having put this photo on my web site, in the astronomical amount of NIS 40,000, which we cannot and will not do. Fortunately, the Israeli copyright law states that while damages must be paid if the violator knew or should have known that he was in violation, if this was an innocent mistake, as it was here, no damages will be required.

The same law firm, three weeks later, claimed, incorrectly, that we had not removed the photo as demanded, and threatened more sanctions. This was presumably due to the use of a web browser which stores web pages so that next time you look at them, they will appear immediately, but if they have been changed since your previous look, you won't know it.

We offered to print a correction on the site and also for the subscribers of the magazine, but so far they have not accepted this solution.