What a headache.

This is an image of a stone wall. Not any stone wall, this is the stone wall against which I have been banging my head today. It should have been a brick wall, but the stone is prettier.

Yesterday EZ called me to say there was a link about submitting images to a British newspaper. I checked the link, and realized that only people who would be in Edinburgh during the Festival were eligible. EZ did not read the requirements properly and tagged some of his images. He then received an email, which in slightly veiled terms, accused him of trying to slip his submissions past the moderators thereby causing them a lot of work filtering them out. They were obviously pretty irritated, it being late on a Friday night, so they then told him, for good measure, that his links to large images on Smugmug contravened the blipfoto rules, and that if he continued, he could have his journal suspended. (The entire letter can be seen on his Smugmug web-site). When he posted the paragraph relating to the Smugmug links in his journal, (he had no problem with the Festival matter and had apologized for any inconvenience he had caused,) he was accused of dishonesty by G, (a libelous accusation, if ever I heard one) and the ability to leave comments on his page was removed. I, then, opened a forum blipchat thread, asking for clarification of these rules. Joe answered, once again accusing EZ of deceit and locked the forum. Do take a look; was I out of order?
I promptly emailed Joe and G explaining that I certainly had not been deceived; in fact here is the email:

I wish to make it clear that I was in no way deceived as I have seen the whole email. Steve is not a deceitful person. The part referring to the blipfestival has nothing whatever to do with the part referring to links, which is why, after having posted the whole email on his page, he thought it confusing and took out the first paragraph. Steve made a genuine mistake; he did not read the requirements fully for posting to the Festival thing, and apologised for that when it was pointed out to him. I know him and I know that in no way was he trying to slip something past you, as was inferred by the email sent to him.
Because he feels he has been singled out unfairly, he has said he will no longer be posting blips. This will be a great loss to those of us who appreciate the work he goes to, to produce such wonderful pictures. I hope he changes his mind for the sake of all the natural history lovers on blip.
I appreciate that this is an ad free site and that is one of the reasons it is so enjoyable . However, all the other sites linked to have facilities for buying images; smugpro maybe markets them better. When you, Joe, wrote to him in April, asking why he was linking to large images to smugmug, his answer must have been satisfactory, or you would surely have told him then that doing so was unacceptable.

Well, the Headmaster has not replied; I will give him the benefit of the doubt as it is Saturday and I am sure he needs time off. I do wonder now, when I look back on other related discussions that usually end with, "you are not aware of the whole facts" and a lock down, whether I am at the right school. EzHighway has decided that he should go elsewhere.

I would like to add that I have had a pleasant reply from Joe now, suggesting EZ gets in touch and that they work something out; I hope they do.